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AS and the Environment...


FakeConcern

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With modern legislation cars and their systems have also got more complex and material demanding. If you were designing one from scratch now with modern tech and no legislation at all, aprart from the need to be as simple, sparing of materials and efficient as possible, I wonder what would be produced?  Not what we have on our roads.

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So basically, as we're seeing from this debate thus far, the answer isn't down to what the individual choose to acquire, it's a far larger and more complicated picture than that.  Buy what makes you happy and soothes your conscience is probably the answer to the original question.

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I guess anything can be achieved by legislation to sort out the impact of transport on climate.

But for any individual government to go out on a limb and knacker their country's competitiveness would be bad news for getting elected. It has to be international and collective action - and I'm not optimistic about that (some will opt out, some will cheat).

I haven't been on an aeroplane since 1998.  So that's my smug contribution to not increasing the problem.

 

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3 hours ago, BorniteIdentity said:

Climate concern is nothing new to me.  As long ago as 30 years ago we were being taught in school about greenhouse gas emissions and a hole in the o-zone layer.

You're a similar* age to me, and yes in the late 80's it was all the rage (even Thatcher was into it). I had an exercise book at school with 'pollution' on the cover and loads of moralising inside from a pompous 9 year old, lol.

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3 hours ago, Dick Longbridge said:

Plastic sump plugs?

Non-replaceable LEDs in door mirrors? 

Sealed for life rear lights?

I'm fortunate enough not to have one of these modern bling trophies as a daily. Why do people buy into this shit? 

 

The majority of people who don't know one end of a car from the other have little choice, I suspect. Those who, like us, could hack up solutions to these sort of problems are in a tiny minority.

 

A good example of this is the drivers side mirror on our Boxer that some inconsiderate twatbasket clouted, damaging the plastic housing. This mirror has a repeater in and two separate motorised glasses, and therefore costs £££ from Peugeot, who would only sell me the whole thing. I didn't even bother looking in the scrappers as they will always bend you over for stuff like mirrors. Happily, some enterprising Polish chap on eBay is making looky-likey outer shells for these and other light commercial mirrors, and it got fixed for £15 incl. postage. Most folks would have just got bent over for a new one + fitting, and they would see that as the normal way of things.

 

 

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I do my bit by running old cars and only taking flights for work when I have no other choice. I do my bit for the carbon footprint by running a 7 litre Cobra and a 6.75 litre turbo Bentley :-)

In all seriousness, I firmly believe that man made climate change is being tackled in completely the wrong direction, and is being used to generate money for many. The truth of the matter is quite simply there are just too many people on this planet. At the moment, it can cope but soon that may change. There is only one lasting and sure fire solution - we need to get rid of 75% of the worlds population, equally in all continents.  That will stop the climate change - anything else is pretending to. Obviously I will be part of the 25% that remains for coming up with the idea....

As this is never going to happen, all our energies should be put into dealing with the consequences, not wasting it on pretending we can slow it down/stop it.

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nothing is sealed for life as far as I am concerned ......  and if it can be stuck back together in a pleasing way , all the better ,  with  rivets and screws being an option ...

I have a old car , it goes and stops and owes me nowt , as opposed to some people I can fix a car to a certain extent , and it dont do a great mileage ,

but seeing some this years plate  4x4 SUV on the school run grinds me up !!!!   why , climate , short journey , kids not walking springs to mind ..

I must show my son Soylant Green some time , he says our farms have to produce 60% more food in 20 years and people are working on this !!!!

and

just bought 5 litres of concentrated low temp window wash for the cars ...  a fiver , it will last me ages ...

now most places sell window wash mix ,  for people who cant / cant be arsed mixing ,  so we are shipping water around in a plastic container ????

which will get poured into a car , and then the container dumped .......

 

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I wouldn't say the carbon footprint to ship a bicycle in a container is enormous.  It would certainly be somewhat less than shipping 4 or 5 bike shaped objects from China that will wear out within a year or two.  I say this as someone who is feeling a little guilty about not joining the protest as I was making the most of a dry day to earn some money on the other side of the Square.
I've not bought an Islabike as I rarely buy anything new but I like the company as they treat the staff really well.  They also seem to employ really nice people.
Although the carbon footprint of the container is small unfortunately the container shipping industry carbon footprint is very large and not very restricted emissions wise compared to air freight. Add the fact that most container ships cannot connect to shore power as they are all bespoke built and not universal, so run engines and generators continuously.
New ships are being built with open loop and closed loop scrubbers to clean up emissions but guess where the cheaper open loop scrubbers dump out.
Think I learnt all this off of BBC World Service on one of my insomnia nights.
I am not a green eco warrior, and I realise everything we as ordinary people do is a compromise between cost and affordability for us but for business it is about maximising profits.
Disclosure time: I believe my better half is causing a lot of the pollution at the moment with the amount of stuff she is buying from china for christmas in general. None of it seems to be presents either!!



Sent from my SM-A505FN using Tapatalk

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41 minutes ago, Saabnut said:

...... The truth of the matter is quite simply there are just too many people on this planet. At the moment, it can cope but soon that may change. There is only one lasting and sure fire solution - we need to get rid of 75% of the worlds population, equally in all continents.  .....

This is what Eggstinktion Rebellion won't talk about.

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Interesting thread. 

The above basically hits the nail on the head. Our growing populous combined with our desire to live our lives in relative luxury (cars/central heating/consumerism/yadda) and rigid inability to change our lifestyles means we really are well and truly fucked. 

I just hope that mini me will still be able to enjoy a life of relative normality before the end properly begins. 

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6 hours ago, Bobthebeard said:

Fleets of diesel buses replacing (electric) trains because 'insert reason'. Large numbers of heavy lorries supplying building materials for the thousands of new build four/five bedroom  detached houses that we are allegedly short of, an hour added morning and evening to any journey of more than five miles due to the extra cars from the extra houses stuck on the old roads that were never designed for this. More roadworks to mend the rapidly disintegrating old roads equals more traffic jams and more lorries carrying stuff. So, more fuel burnt whilst sat in traffic etc etc. This is only around my area by the way. The Fylde coast is hardly a seething hub of industry and manufacturing. For several hours a day it can take over an hour to do five miles. One of our two household recycling places closed recently meaning a ten mile round trip instead of a two mile one and a queue to get in. It goes on. Too many people needing to go to places, myself included. A recent journey to Liverpool airport to drop off a customer ( am a private hire driver) took over five hours due to congestion  (120 miles round trip). The answer, if there is one is beyond me! 

The answer is complex. 

Certainly low density new development strung out in the countryside should be avoided. Denser development in towns and villages is better to alleviate the need to travel so much. 

Multi-modal transport as mentioned in an earler post is to be encouraged by making it easier and safer to walk, or cycle, or travel by bus or tram or train or a combination or to make them easier to combine with driving . These journeys can be more cost effective to run in settlements with more density ie more people per square miles. 

If you make these options attractive it can go some way to cutting congestion. 

For example I went to Cambridge a few times recently and used the park and ride. Very effective - I did not even  take the bus - I took my bike in the back of my C15 and cycled into the city centre - it was all free so it was a no-brainer to do it that way. Completely stress free - I did not even consider driving into the city.

Nottingham, Croydon and Manchester have their trams which I have used - again pretty good.

HS2 seems a good idea - the M1 and M6 are pretty bad these days

Is all this happening fast enough? Probably not. There is still room for car travel...but its good to get the other modes working better - which the are currently not.

And an above inflation average increase in rail fares does nothing to help.

The litmus test for all this is the Antarctic ice shelves - these are reported to be thinning. The Antarctic continent has ice on it 6000ft deep. That's an awful lot of water...a bit like putting too many ice cubes in a drink...sea level may rise...it already has a bit.

And on the UK climate - we are currently warmed by the Atlantic converyor  bringing warm water up from the equator - this appears to be slowing so in due course the weather here may become significantly colder.  Perhaps...

Certainly droughts in Africa, fires in Australia and California etc are the possible first signs of impacts of climate warming. 

A bit of flooding in the UK...but who knows if it will worsen in the short term? Certainly a lot of our current support systems, transport, power, distribution, farming etc need some significant thought.

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1 hour ago, louiepj said:

Although the carbon footprint of the container is small unfortunately the container shipping industry carbon footprint is very large and not very restricted emissions wise compared to air freight. Add the fact that most container ships cannot connect to shore power as they are all bespoke built and not universal, so run engines and generators continuously.
New ships are being built with open loop and closed loop scrubbers to clean up emissions but guess where the cheaper open loop scrubbers dump out.
Think I learnt all this off of BBC World Service on one of my insomnia nights.

Old ships are also having to be retro-fitted with scrubbers under the latest regulations.  In fact it's very difficult to get a spot at a dry dock anywhere in Asia at the moment as they're all full of cargo vessels having scrubbers fitted.  A lot of them will be open-loop due to the relatively low value of the ships, which as you say seems to be a bit of a cheat - just moving the pollution from the air to the sea.

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15 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

There have been a few books/films on the subject (probably lots actually) - The Stand, and Utopia spring to mind. Man made virus, kills off the vast majority of the population, without discrimination/buying your way out. Job done.

Without wanting to sound too David Icke, I can actually see this happening. 

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This map pretty well shows where the current problem for the planet originates and it's not our tin pot little country any more. https://www.wri.org/blog/2014/09/explore-changing-global-emissions-through-interactive-maps It shows levels produced over the last 160 years. These developing countries have access to the latest modern technology so I don't really see the excuse to not doing anything about it and leaving us to blaze the trail to a cleaner world.

As for electric cars, not even the new messiah Musk has figured out what to do with the bloody things, he seems to be far more pre-occupied with selling them than dealing with them afterwards. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1122631_tesla-launches-battery-recycling-at-nevada-gigafactory That soundbite is from April this year and still nothing. He seems a bit busy firing rockets using shit loads of fuel lately instead... 

This poor cunt can't even get rid of his crashed Tesla as he can't find anyone to deal with the battery and recycle it! https://climatechangedispatch.com/wrecked-tesla-recycle-car/ 

Personally I'll be running the old pug I have for a while yet, probably on a veg mix in the near term when the ethanol content in new fuel gets higher. I was pretty well convinced it was the right thing to do before but now my mind is definitely made up after reading the post on what new parts are literally throw away items FFS.

Attenborough's heart was in the right place but I think he got it totally wrong. The consumers aren't the problem, it's the manufacturers. Target them and things will change, people can't but what isn't available after all.

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39 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

There have been a few books/films on the subject (probably lots actually) - The Stand, and Utopia spring to mind. Man made virus, kills off the vast majority of the population, without discrimination/buying your way out. Job done.

I remember seeing The Stand in the mid-1990s. Good film. One of the characters representing the forces of evil was called Nadine. Nadine was also the name of my first boss, and a nasty piece of work she turned out to be.

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Food packaging is Another thing that bothers me.

For example

Over the past few years I've basically not been inclined to eat meat and fish and have been buying vegetarian and vegan alternatives, plant based meat products etc etc. 

Of course with a lot of the vegan products there is alway some pretentious drivvle on the package.  Like so

Screenshot_20191202-175214.thumb.jpg.cb23ddd836e302bb37320dbed4b97479.jpg

Tastes dam good, marginally healthier, Sign me up. Ohh what's that on the back?

PLASTIC PACKAGING NOT YET RECYCLED. 

Good for the planet yeah ? fuckwits.

Screenshot_20191202-180023.jpg.8a723cc0957a341baa64c9d4b3b43b92.jpg

 

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1 hour ago, Tadhg Tiogar said:

I remember seeing The Stand in the mid-1990s. Good film. One of the characters representing the forces of evil was called Nadine. Nadine was also the name of my first boss, and a nasty piece of work she turned out to be.

I thought it was a crap film - but the book is fantastic. The Channel 4(?) series Utopia was a great piece of TV

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The government want as many people as possible on car finance to keep selling new ICE cars as it's billions in vat , road tax and fuel duty annually

They play at being environmentally friendly but they dont want most cars on the road to be electric.

I know a guy that has the recycling contract at the tip , nothing electrical is allowed to be taken from site , it all has to be destroyed , you'd be amazed at what comes in , most of it working perfectly , collectable computers, 60" TVs discarded because there's a new one out and HiFi by the skip full , he saw a guy throw a Linn Sondek turntable in a few weeks ago ,£300-500 if it worked 

You cant tell me this utter bollocks legislation is nothing to do with selling new units 

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I think keeping a car as long as you can & well maintained has to be better for the environment than buying a new one that has to be made & shipped here. 

Electric cars (currently) don't seem a particularly good long term ownership proposition as the batteries degrade & if they need to have the battery pack replaced it costs often what the car is worth (that may change though as time goes on).

I do think though that electric cars due to the above may lend themselves better to the buy it, run if for 3 years & then flip it for something new, PCP type approach, as any big expense would be covered & you'd keep 100% battery range. That would probably also tie in with how most motor manufacturers like to do business these days.. Hardly a planet saving ideal.

Manufacturers want to sell new cars. the EU wants to sell cars (think France & Germany the big EU players who have big motor industries).  France is also a major player in power stations/energy etc. I think a lot of it may have less to do with the planet & more about disposable car ownership/ funding economies.

If  politicians gave a shit about the planet we'd be building decent  cheap public transport infrastructure, that would do wonders for the environment & grid locked roads. Thus giving people a choice as to whether to take a car into town or to work. 

Just my cynical opinion 

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Whats happening now was always inevitable mainly because of consumerism.

The right balance between the evironment and consumerism has gone so far into the favour of consumerism it is almost impossible to backtrack. 

We have always made stuff which created consumerism. Stuff was invented to make our lives "easier" but some others wanted a piece of the action so other "brands" were made. Then stuff got divided up between basic models, mid-spec models and high-spec models. Someone then got the bright idea that everyone should have access to the high-spec stuff should they so desire, so the banking system and access to money was shaken up to make it much easier to borrow/access money and pay for your dream stuff which put people into debt. Everyone won; rhe consumer got what they wanted; the manufacturer and seller got thier share by building and selling the item, the banks lent money and got someone into debt which created more revenue for them and the consumer got their item to show off to thier friend and family.

But we couldn't stop there. Oh no. Stuff eventually got made cheaper, which brought in even more manufacturers/sellers worldwide thus created more advertising opportunities. In advertising, there are 3 important points;

1. New = good because everyone will envy you etc...

2. Old = bad because everyone will laugh at you.

3. You need it NOW because its current and new and a celebrity has got one and all your friends will instantly be jealous/envy you.

So now because of; fast consumerism, easy access to money, too much choice and fast money making, no actual thought process really ever went to the recycling of "stuff" no one thought about the waste it'd generate caused by cheapness and the desire of "new" because they all thought it was someone elses' problem. So we now have a massive a wastage issue which has caused environmental problems.

Various governments around the world simply stuck thier heads in the sand hoping people will simply forget about it because the alternative is to tell businesses to either invest massively in becoming "green" causing businesses to actually just break even or even lose money or simply shut down which means people lose thier jobs.

Personally I hate wastage. I'll buy what I need. If I want something, I'll wait until its old/second-hand or at least cheap enough to buy. If its lasted as long as it has its either lucky or is well made.

When it comes to consumerist stuff like cars, TVs, phones etc... as the band WetWetWet once said;

'I always buy the best but never something new'

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I think it's too late to do much about global warming. Carbon neutral by 2040 is the vague plan here.

Meanwhile we will be adding another 100 million a year to the world population. I have said for years,

since the late seventies, that if we had half the population we would have half the problems. I decided

in the late seventies not to breed because I learnt at that time there were approximately 4.5 billion

and now, in my lifetime, we are up to about 8 billion and by the time I pop off this fucked planet, hopefully

another ten years or so, there will be 9 billion.  I'm in agreement with Saabnut and Tadhg Tiogar.

Too many people but you can't tell people to have less children than they  want. To me more than two

is just being a bit 'I want therefore I will' without a thought of the consequences. Along the same lines

as wanting a new car every few years whether you need it or not. Regression is the only way forward but

won't happen because we have to " progress".

Meanwhile, for selfish reasons, I'm going to keep running my veg friendly 305 van for as long as I can.

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When I started this thread I kinda thought I’d be responding to each post, but it’s rather got away from me with lots of thought provoking posts and interesting points made.

The main theme coming out is that consumerism (capitalism really, but we could get over political pretty quickly!) is the driving force for most people and I can sum it up in the words of The Jam

“And the public gets what the public wants
But I want nothing this societys got

The point made above about little old UK being only a tiny participant in the pollution/carbon footprint scene is so true and I feel there isn’t much I personally can do compared to the government and companies producing all this crap. I didn’t know about all the wasteful stuff like single use oil plus, wing mirrors that get thrown away when the indicator bulb fails etc. Obviously I have noticed  all the packaging made out of plastic that gets thrown away into landfill each day and I think this is mainly down to manufacturers. I have two magazines delivered to my door that are packaged in plastic, but it’s made from potatoes and completely compostable, why can’t more be made from this is it the expense? Well both of the magazines are free (Good Motoring free with GEM breakdown & Cycling free with membership to Cycling uk formally CTC) so if it’s affordable for them why not all the vegetables in plastic bags in the supermarket, why not carrier bags instead of the millions of “bags for Life” that get one use etc.

I have been aware that Sweden has always taken environmental issues seriously and I believe it currently has excess recycling capacity. I know that when i owned a 2002 Volvo V70 the handbook had a section detailing what was made from recycled materials and how each component was to be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way at its end of use. I also read that Volvo use a large amount of recycled plastics for the interiors of current cars so some manufacturers make more effort than others.

The time that I commuted by car, I looked into using bike and train, but it meant changing trains and over two hours without the time on the bike so only a car was viable. Similarly we often want to visit our children in Norwich from East Sussex, if we went by train changing at London, we’d just get there in time to come home!

I have read an interesting book “Bike Nation-How Cycling Can Save The World” by Peter Walker although it came a bit late for me as I’d already retired and one of the big points is that the cities that make cycling easy also make driving difficult, it’s not enough to just have the cycling infrastructure if people can easily drive as they will!

Also regarding the population I enjoyed a SF book “Circuit of Heaven” by Dennis Danvers where most of the worlds population have their persona uploaded into a perfect virtual environment.

Overall it seems so far that most AS members feel keeping something going as long as possible is best for the environment

Well this post is too long and a bit disjointed, but I still haven’t scratched the surface haha!

 

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