My brother in law had the contract to take Watford supporters to away games by coach in the UK for 20+ years.
Single measures on their own will not be enough on this Yorkie. I would be for an emissions tax, but also for a ban in internal flights (ie. within the UK) - this would be in line with Scandinavia, and what is planned for Germany. This could of course only work if the rail system plays along with this because we do not want to increase road traffic as a result. Whilst there is a general awareness that too much driving, and too much meat eating etc. are harmfull for the planet the subjects of tourism and freight transport have largely slipped under the radar. The volume of freight being transported today is more per day than for the entire year of my birth and we need to look long and seriously at whether this scale of volume is really necessary. We also need to look at the logistics of freight more closely - why are eg. oranges being taken from Spain to Russia normally transported by container ship or lorry rather than by rail ? Nearly all sources of Co2 emissions are slowly going down (albeit too slowly) but the branches of tourism and freight transport are increasing and we need to focus on these.
The problem with that is that it requires every country to abide by the rules and impose it. We have seen that some countries might think it would be detrimental to their economy and so ignore it. If every country did impose it, it would have the same effect by putting up prices, but with people like Trump around I would have little faith in it.
Agree with both your comments above....... cheap and efficient rail systems are def needed. It currently costs me as much as 6 times the air fair to get the train to central france from Yorkshire.... and booking can be a real hassle online.... and the cheaper tickets are very limited etc etc
There is an interesting article and short video on the BBC website entitled Parisians-fight-climate-change-with-a-surprising-weapon. For some reason it will not post the link address, but it is about a UK invention being put to good use in France. It will not save the planet on its own, but every little helps.
Local initiatives can go a long way Frenchie - particularly if they form networks with other towns. It is possible for towns to calculate their own carbon footprint, along with countries, and to develop a vision of how they want their town to be in eg. 20 years time. This involves parties working together, which is often more productive at the local than national level. There are interesting guidelines for this in the transition towns network, and in some of the principles of permaculture. One idea is that it is more productive to have a garden on my roof than to put solar panels there.
There is a story in The Guardian today about the recycling company Biffa. The second largest company of its type in the UK, it has been fined for trying to send household waste to China. It raises questions on a number of levels. Why are we using so much that we have so much waste? Why are we not investing in our own recycling companies to deal with the waste? What are we doing sending this stuff halfway across the world? If there is money to be made from waste why don't UK companies wish to get involved? Why once again has a UK company been found out about what it is sending across borders? There is a lot more, but it starts to get into why the big parties in Westminster do not wish to take a lead in sorting the problems out. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/sep/27/biffa-fined-export-waste-china
I guess it depends where you live but rail is so much more pleasant than flying. Living in London I reckon it's as quick to get from my house to central Paris by train as plane. It's so much less hassle too!
It does depend a lot on location Dan. Once I have got to Cologne (from the sticks) it is very central with Amsterdam only 2 hours by train, Brussels just less than 2, Liege one hour, Paris 3 and a bit. Going to London is 4 hours with a break in Brussels. Even Switzerland is only 4 hours journey from us.
Newcastle pack the waste into small clean packages and export to Sweden who burn them in a low grade power station and the residue is used as blinding for hardcore in Construction projects
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49884827 The wastage of so much material really does need to be tackled. It is clearly seen as a problem across not only Europe, but in the States as well. When I bought a TV a couple of years ago it said that spare parts if needed would be available for 5 years. My old TV still works even if it has a large background hum on the sound, and that is 40 years old. Countries that are making cheap electrical goods really have to be forced into making products to a decent standard, and large economies where they need to sell to are right to insist on specifications that stop the cheap and nasty.
Modern tv's are generally of excellent quality and rarely go wrong. Consumers are always attracted by the ever improving quality of picture and in built facilities. There will be a lot of perfectly good tv's being dumped not because they are not working but become outdated. The best we can hope for is for gadgets such as phones and tv's can be made with recyclable materials. I just bought one from the excellent Richer Sounds company, 6 year guarantee as standard.
My TV went wrong and the engineer who fixed it suggested that from his experience they were designed to last around the five to six year period. I am not sure that a TV is outdated if it still works. Mine has lots of things that I never use, and simply adding additional features, then telling people they cannot live without them seems wrong. Someone told me recently that they were having a new fitted kitchen installed, with all new electrical appliances. Their old one was six years old, but they had decided it was rather dated. Amazing what an advertising agency can get people to believe.
Modern advertizing is all about convincing people to believe they need something which they, in fact, don't need. Todays luxury becomes tomorrows necessity. And gadgets bought today are seen as museum pieces in a few years time. In order to create the spending power for this consumer madness it is necessary to keep fixed expenditure such as food costs down - hence the link to factory farming, chlorinated chickens, monoculture, and, eventually, gene manipulated food. If the price of food as a percentage of income went back to the same conditions as in the 60s then this system would collapse. The role of agriculture within modern capitalism is to push the price of food down, and keep it there, so as to create spending power for all the useless gadgetery they are trying to off load on us.
Gullible people cannot always be protected from themselves. The picture quality of my new tv is vastly better than my couple of 5 year old sets. The connectivity directly to the internet is also very useful with its array of inbuilt apps. New tvs are also future proofed as much as possible. There will be massive advances in this field in the coming years, the young are far more appreciative of the increased potential.
I can now watch Watford concede goals in the utmost clarity unless I sit strategically behind the sofa!!!
