Carlton Reid 4/10/21
Birmingham has announced what it calls a “transformative” transport plan that will see the car-centric city becoming a super-sized low-traffic neighbourhood.
City officials hope that closing roads to through motor traffic, introducing a fleet of zero-emission cross-city buses and building additional protected cycleways will create a more liveable city.
With HS2 infrastructure rising from the ground and Birmingham hosting the Commonwealth Games next year, the Labour-controlled council believes removing through car journeys will be essential for the city to prosper.
“We’re one of the original motor cities,” said Birmingham city council’s transport lead, Waseem Zaffar. But like other UK cities, Birmingham suffers from an excess of single occupancy car journeys, he added.

…Here, Carbon Brief provides an analysis of when the world is expected to pass these limits in the absence of large future emissions reductions. This is based on the latest generation of climate models – known as ”CMIP6” (see Carbon Brief’s explainer) – that are being run in the lead up to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) sixth assessment report expected in 2021-22.
Our analysis shows that:
• The world will likely exceed 1.5C between 2026 and 2042 in scenarios where emissions are not rapidly reduced, with a central estimate of between 2030 and 2032. 

• The 2C threshold will likely be exceeded between 2034 and 2052 in the highest emissions scenario, with a median year of 2043. 

• In a scenario of modest mitigation – where emissions remain close to current levels – the 2C threshold would be exceeded between 2038 and 2072, with a median of 2052.

Never before in my life have I read a report and felt to the core of my being that every parent who loves their kids must read it. And this is also the first time I have ever opened a column with a mental health warning that what follows may be emotionally disturbing. But when I read the Chatham House Climate Change Risk Assessment report last Friday, I was left devastated at how desperate our situation is.
As I thought how best to convey the essential, terrifying message of the report, I decided I should just lay out the raw facts and let them reach your soul.
The two most civilisation-shattering facts are these. Firstly, under the current global government commitments to cut carbon emissions, as laid out in the Paris Climate Agreement, we have only a 1 per cent chance of not breaching a 1.5˚C rise of global temperatures. This is the temperature that prompted 200 health journals around the world, including the British Medical Journal, to simultaneously issue an editorial last week telling governments that passing this 1.5C rise would pose the greatest catastrophic, irreversible threat ever to human health.

Welcome to the One Million Pound Club.
To make the top ten donors to the Conservative Party since Boris Johnson became prime minister, you need to have stumped up a seven figure sum.
At the top of the chart, by a considerable margin, the providers of one of the most memorable political images of the last few years.
Boris Johnson at the wheel of a JCB, a polystyrene wall smashed, his ‘Get Brexit Done’ slogan in the mechanical shovel.
JC Bamford Excavators Limited has given just over £2.5m in the last two years. Lord Bamford, the chairman of the family owned company, has personally given £100,000 since 2010, when the Conservatives returned to government. He became a Conservative peer in 2013.
I’ve been trying to find out what motivates people to give money to the Conservative Party, how do they choose how much to give and how do they measure if it is worth it? 

Why is this important?
Minecraft have combined with National Highways to launch a game to indoctrinate children into believing that it is acceptable to build hugely damaging road schemes. It specifically works to “gamify” the building of the Lower Thames Crossing, the biggest carbon-emitting project in the UK and major contributor to the air pollution that kills 40,000 people per year. And it makes a game of the destruction of large parts of the World Heritage Site of Stonehenge. UNESCO now threatens to put Europe’s premier prehistoric site on to the endangered list if National Highways goes ahead with this scheme. 

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking (APPGCW) has released its inquiry report into the Government’s upcoming 2nd Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS2).
The inquiry, exploring what CWIS2 should look like, took place in July and the list of witnesses can be found online. Three evidence sessions were held.
The report makes a number of detailed and wide-ranging recommendations – which are based on evidence received from a variety of stakeholders, provided both in virtual sessions and in writing. 
The inquiry was supported by Brompton Bicycle.

March 13, 2015
San Francisco is moving forward with a plan to add protected bike lanes on Polk Street, one of the busiest cycling corridors in the city, but the decision didn’t come easy. The San Francisco Examiner reports that the plan endured about 2.5 years of debate. At the center of the dispute was an objection to the loss of on-street parking spaces by local merchants (our emphasis):
Some business owners had argued that a proposed loss of 140 parking spaces in the area would lead to financial losses, and they had pushed hard for studies on possible economic impacts in order to pause construction of the bike lane.

Children from Brighton & Hove have been designing their ‘dream streets’ to celebrate this year’s Car Free Day.
Young people from Carlton Hill, Elm Grove and St Luke’s primary schools were asked to draw what their perfect street would look like and have them displayed as part of an exhibition at Jubilee Library in Jubilee Square.
Now, children visiting the exhibition are getting the chance to add their own designs and dream streets to the display. There are templates available for children to draw and colour on, a real chance to design a street fit for the future.