George Monbiot
Like several of the world’s major cities, our capital is being remodelled in response. The London mayor – recognising that, while fewer passengers can use public transport, a switch to cars would cause gridlock and lethal pollution – has set aside road space for cycling and walking. Greater Manchester hopes to build 1,800 miles of protected pedestrian and bicycle routes.
Cycling to work is described by some doctors as “the miracle pill”, massively reducing the chances of early death: if you want to save the NHS, get on your bike. But support from central government is weak and contradictory, and involves a fraction of the money it is spending on new roads. The major impediment to a cycling revolution is the danger of being hit by a car.
However a car is powered, can it ever be an efficient use of resources and space to spend up to 95% of that energy moving the weight of the vehicle itself – theconversation.com
“However a car is powered, can it ever be an efficient use of resources and space to spend up to 95% of that energy moving the weight of the vehicle itself, rather than its passengers and goods?”
Labour split by leadership call for action against climate crisis blockades | Labour | The Guardian
Plea by shadow justice secretary Steve Reed for nationwide bans on activists’ tactics angers many on left of party
Michael Savage
Labour faces an escalating internal row over the treatment of climate crisis protesters after a shadow cabinet minister backed calls for nationwide injunctions to stop them blocking critical roads and fuel supplies.
Steve Reed, the shadow justice secretary, called for immediate and wide-ranging bans on protesters’ tactics to be put in place last week. Reed said ministers should “get on with their jobs” and block further action from the Just Stop Oil group after about 40 arrests were made at Inter Terminals in Grays, Essex, last Monday. Others were arrested at Kingsbury oil terminal in Warwickshire.
XR scientists glue hands to business department in London climate protest | Environmental activism | The Guardian
Affiliates of Scientists for Extinction Rebellion highlight climate science they say government is ignoring
Damien Gayle
Climate protesters enter Shell HQ and glue themselves to government building – video
Twenty-five scientists have pasted pages of scientific papers to the windows of the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and glued their hands to the glass to highlight the climate science they said the government was ignoring.
The scientists, affiliated with Scientists for Extinction Rebellion, arrived at the department’s building at 1 Victoria Street, Westminster, London, just after 11am. Doctors and health professionals staged a decoy action to give them space to get into position.
The action came a week after the government published a new energy strategy that promised to continue the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas, failed to set targets for onshore wind, and gave nuclear power a central role.
Re-think city transport… says IPCC – transportxtra.com
Deniz Huseyin 12 April 2022
Significant change to transport will be essential if the worst impacts of climate change are not to become irreversible, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) has warned.
Measures must be introduced now to create more connected and less car-dependent cities, encouraging homeworking and active travel and accelerating the shift to electric vehicles, it says.
Imperial College London’s Professor Jim Skea is co-chair of Working Group III, the group of 278 authors responsible for the report. “It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C,” he said. “Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible.”
The Congestion Con – Transportation For America – t4america.org
How more lanes and more money equals more congestion
In an expensive effort to curb congestion in urban regions, we have overwhelmingly prioritised one strategy: we have spent decades and hundreds of billions of dollars widening and building new highways. We added 30,511 new freeway lane-miles of road in the largest 100 urbanised areas between 1993 and 2017, an increase of 42%.
Average fuel economy of new US cars – mateosfo – Twitter
Average fuel economy of new US cars
1987: 22 mpg
2020 (mostly trucks/SUVs): 25 mpg
we’ve come a short way, baby
The myth of the American love affair with cars – washingtonpost.com
Emily Badger
“This ‘love affair’ thesis is like the ultimate story,” says Peter Norton, a historian at the University of Virginia, who warns that we need to revisit how we came to believe this line before we embrace its logical conclusion in a future full of driverless cars. “It’s one of the biggest public relations coups of all time. It’s always treated as folk wisdom, as an organic growth from society. One of the signs of its success is that everyone forgets it was invented as a public relations campaign.”
This “love affair” was coined, in fact, during a 1961 episode of a weekly hour-long television program called the DuPont Show of the Week (sponsored, incidentally, by DuPont, which owned a 23 percent stake in General Motors at the time). The program, titled “Merrily We Roll Along,” was promoted by DuPont as “the story of America’s love affair with the automobile.”
This “love affair” was coined, in fact, during a 1961 episode of a weekly hour-long television program called the DuPont Show of the Week (sponsored, incidentally, by DuPont, which owned a 23 percent stake in General Motors at the time). The program, titled “Merrily We Roll Along,” was promoted by DuPont as “the story of America’s love affair with the automobile.”
Up to 40 vehicles set on fire in spate of arson attacks – wiltshirelive.co.uk
About 40 vehicles were deliberately set on fire – including about 20 at a Rolls Royce facility. Residents near the plant in Filton, South Gloucestershire, reported they were awoken by loud bangs and could see a huge fire.
On top of that about 20 vehicles were set alight in the Bristol area in the early hours of Sunday morning. Avon and Somerset Police first received a call at about 1.30am about a vehicle on fire in New Road, Stoke Gifford.
Every City’s Cycleway Network Should Be As Dense As Road Network, Says American Academic – forbes.com
Carlton Reid
“People on bicycles want to reach all destinations in a city just the same way that people in cars want to be able to reach all parts of the city,” says American academic Marcel Moran.
“A city’s bike network should be equivalent to the road network,” he told me via a Zoom call.
“The challenge is not where bike lanes should go, but where shouldn’t they go? And there are very few places we shouldn’t have safe bike infrastructure.”
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