News from Elsewhere

Freelance writer for Fleet News, Tom Seymour has been a specialist B2B journalist covering the automotive sector for over 14 years. He started his freelance career in 2015 and currently writes for a variety of automotive, business and technology publications.

02/11/2021 in Latest news
A new report from the University of Hertfordshire spotlights several schemes that could make an immediate impact to reduce car dependancy outside of cities.
Led by Smart Transport chair Professor Stephen Joseph, The Future of Transport Outside Cities report highlights how cities dominate research and policy discussions about transport, even though ‘Shire’ counties are responsible for 74% of the UK’s transport emissions.
Despite a reduction in car use during the pandemic, the transport sector remained the largest emitter of carbon emissions in 2020 (at 29.8%). Therefore, transport is key to any strategy aiming to combat climate change. 

@edwardlamb
Both dressed in black. One has the potential to kill. But rather than attack the source of the problem we have decided to label children as ‘vulnerable road users’ and shame them into wearing bright clothes that we know do not work. Sad

03 November 2021

 A survey seeking to capture a ‘snapshot’ of how transport professionals feel about the future is being carried out by the University of the West of England.
Researchers are seeking the views of professionals, along with volunteers and campaigners in the sector, on how they think transport will change between now and 2035.
Steve Melia, lecturer in transport and planning at the University of the West of England, said: “This is a rapid review at a time of great uncertainty for transport. What difference will climate change and decarbonisation make?
“Will the changes we saw during the lockdowns endure or evaporate? What place will the car have in future patterns of movement?
“This survey aims to take a snapshot and to analyse the relationships between what we believe and what we expect to happen.”
The deadline for feedback is 15 November. https://uwe.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2h2pdmVGybjA53o
Steve.melia@uwe.ac.uk

Marina BolotnikovaMar 11, 2020
As a kid, I was furious about SUVs with a passion that now seems embarrassing, telling all the suburban adults I knew that their ugly, gas-guzzling tanks were going to end life on Earth. I didn’t come up with this idea myself: Anti-SUV discourse was everywhere. Mainstream organizations like the Sierra Club — which famously renamed the huge Ford Excursion “Ford Valdez” after the catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill — helped create a cultural backlash against these hulking cars. A TV ad campaign run by the Evangelical Environmental Network — “What Would Jesus Drive?” — urged Midwesterners to rethink their addiction to big cars. New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher’s 2002 polemic High and Mighty sneered at the rise of “behemoths that guzzle gas, spew pollution, and endanger their occupants and other motorists.”

02/11/2021

We’ve seen Insulate Britain emerge onto their M25 stage in the last couple of weeks with their brave and dangerous protests. They are prepared to go to prison as campaigners try to wake the population up to the fact we are careering headlong into the worst crisis humanity has ever faced.

The M25 is an obvious target for campaigners. Like many roads, it is frequently congested in the same areas at the same times. Completed in 1986, within six years it was carrying more than twice the volume of traffic for which it was designed!
Transport is the largest carbon-emitting sector in the UK. This isn’t surprising when you consider that 62 per cent of car journeys are ‘single occupancy’. This doesn’t take into account taxi and private hire journeys, which are worse than single occupancy. Taking a one or two tonne vehicle with you for every trip is going to use a massive amount of energy that could easily be put to better use: heating homes, for example

Nafeez Ahmed reveals how the British Government is working with a top climate denial funder to promote unproven environmental solutions

The Government, which is hosting the COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow, is being formally advised by Texas fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil – one of the world’s biggest funders of climate science denial – according to Government documents examined exclusively by Byline Times.

Transport emissions account for almost a third of global carbon dioxide emissions – and while other sectors such as the energy industry have reduced their emissions over the past three decades, transport emissions are growing. It is the EU’s second most polluting sector and the United Kingdom’s biggest single producer of carbon dioxide, with cars and vans making up the vast majority of these emissions. If we are to meet our net zero targets by 2050, as over 130 countries have committed to do, then something needs to be done about these gas-guzzling monsters.