Author name: Steven Edwards

News from Elsewhere

General Motors streetcar conspiracy – en.m.wikipedia.org

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Contributors to Wikimedia projects
48-61 minutes
The General Motors streetcar conspiracy refers to convictions of General Motors (GM) and other companies that were involved in monopolizing the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines (NCL) and its subsidiaries, and to allegations that the defendants conspired to own or control transit systems, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The suit created lingering suspicions that the defendants had in fact plotted to dismantle streetcar systems in many cities in the United States as an attempt to monopolise surface transportation. 

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How to Stop the Climate Crisis in Six months | 4 September 2021 | Roger Hallam – YouTube

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49,759 views11 Oct 2021 Extinction Rebellion UK 71.5K subscribers
“We have to move quickly. What we do, I believe, in the next three to four years will determine the future of humanity”.
Sir David King. Former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government.

Given there is a real world out there and we have 3-4 years to stop it being destroyed, we have to engage in nonviolent direct action to stop governments imposing upon us the greatest act of criminality in the history of humanity: namely destroying the livelihoods and lives of the next thousand generations. This video gives you the key elements of success which people are adapting as they step into their responsibilities to force political change. Nothing is more important. We can not longer afford to lose.
“We struggle to name any climate scientist who at that time thought the Paris Agreement was feasible. We have since been told by some scientists that the Paris Agreement was “of course important for climate justice but unworkable” and “a complete shock, no one thought limiting to 1.5°C was possible”. Rather than being able to limit warming to 1.5°C, a senior academic involved in the IPCC concluded we were heading beyond 3°C by the end of this century.”

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There’s No Time for Gradualism – jacobinmag.com

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Alyssa Battistoni
There’s a strange circularity to writing about climate change. Every few months or so, a new report comes out from an esteemed scientific body; each time, the conclusions are grim: the planet continues to warm steadily; each time, there are more severe observed effects at lower levels of warming than scientists had previously predicted. Every time one of the well-meaning scientists who wrote the report says something like “the final tick box is political will.” Another says something like “it’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now.” 

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Return to the saddle is revelation for Hounslow’s Hanif Khan – Transport Xtra

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Hounslow’s Hanif Khan 03 December 2021
Hounslow Councils’ cabinet member for transport told delegates at the Local Transport Summit how re-discovering the joys of cycling has improved his health and the quality of his life.

“In my childhood I liked cycling around – it gave me a bit of freedom. But then I stopped and didn’t touch my cycle for 30 years,” said Cllr Hanif Khan.
He said he saw using his car as more convenient, even for short journeys, and got into the habit of eating in his car. 

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Presenter of a popular web show mainly about electric vehicles, goes to Utrecht and is wowed by the infrastructure – APPGCW

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@allpartycycling
Presenter of a popular web show mainly about electric vehicles, goes to Utrecht and is wowed by the infrastructure. Well worth watching https://youtu.be/7sGy4kS9T2w
Fully Charged Show
@FullyChargedShw
Dec 2
WATCH NOW
https://buff.ly/3IeR7Ny Visiting the the city where things are done differently! A ‘Fully Charged’ CITY Built Around BICYCLES?  #ClimateChange #Bikes #Sustainability

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Electric Cars Not As Eco As Policymakers Claim, Says Executive Who Developed Nissan LEAF – Forbes

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Carlton Reid Nov 19, 2021

Nissan’s former chief planning officer Andy Palmer, poses with the company’s new commercial electric
Zero tailpipe emissions and net-zero are not the same things, says Andy Palmer, the veteran automotive executive responsible for launching Nissan LEAF, the world’s first mass-market electric car.

“Policymakers haven’t grasped this [fact] yet,” he said at a COP26 fringe event in Glasgow.
“I see the terminology of zero emissions being misunderstood over and over again,” he told the event, co-sponsored by Autotrader magazine.
“If you buy an electric vehicle, you’re not buying a zero-emission vehicle,” he stressed.
“It takes about 70% more carbon to build an electric vehicle than it does an internal combustion vehicle.”

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Reclaim the kerb: The future of parking and kerbside management in London – Centre for London

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With increasing demand on our roads, and serious challenges including climate change, poor air quality, and road danger, the Mayor of London and London boroughs are committed to reducing reliance on private cars and to promoting public transport and active travel.

But while Londoners are increasingly concerned about climate change and local air quality, there are still some significant barriers to a less car-reliant city. Car ownership has hardly moved in London in recent years and the proportion of trips made by public transport, walking or cycling hasn’t changed for the last three years.Yet Londoners want trees and green space, clutter-free pavements and children’s play spaces prioritised on their streets over on-street residential parking.

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Nobody is asking you to take public transport that doesn’t exist – Stiff Upper Quip

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On our zombified transport debate

James Harris11 hr ago

The concept of expertise has become a tricky one; how do you identify it across a sea of competing voices? How do you identify experts when everyone has the capacity to set themselves up with an online megaphone? It’s worth saying though that, although many people want to establish their own personal internet publishing brand, the majority of don’t, and remain instead happy to trust to expertise. The daily SAGE briefings in the pandemic demonstrate this. Who amongst us does not feel reassured and oriented by those dull men and their PowerPoints? But that’s in a crisis. Outside of one, such expertise is rarely given such a public platform, and in areas where there is less public interest, consensus can easily form around more ill-considered positions. For less sensational debates, the difficulty is that the only people who feel strongly enough to try and convince others are those with extreme views, which means that quite easily a marginal opinion becomes the default one for a person who takes just enough interest in a thing to make conversation.

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