by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
While electric vehicle charging points in London are spreading in a virus-like fashion and the use of electric vehicles (EVs) is rising June 20th saw the announcement of changes in the City of London's parking concessions for electric vehicles.
Those that currently park electric vehicles in the area of the City of London under the borough's electric vehicle scheme will see an increase in on-street parking from zero to £50 per year. Off-street parking, in the City's car parks, will go from nil to £2,000 per year in 2009. According to information this fee for off-street will then further increase to £4,000 per year by 2010 and to £6396 in 2011, making it then the same as the charges for a standard cars with internal combustion engines.
The reason for this dramatic change by the City of London that the borough has given is that although the programme had proved very successful it had, in their view, encouraged increased vehicle use within the borough.
No one, however, mentioned the subsequent air quality improvements through the use of zero emission vehicles anywhere in the announcement.
While the owners of electric vehicles (EVs) and advocates and dealers of those may lament this move by the Square Mile as a step backwards, the council justified its decision by arguing that those incentives had actually increased traffic in the area.
We can only assume that it was encouraging owners of electric vehicles from neighboring boroughs to park in the City of London where there was no charge for parking.
One can only believe that the borough has realized that too many people have switched from ICE vehicles to electric vehicles and that their parking revenues have gone down and they are worried to have this revenue disappear altogether over time.
Furthermore it may have been taking people away from London’s extensive public transit network. In both cases losing revenue to the boroughs and the coffers of the capital as a whole.
This does, obviously, draw on an interesting and continuing debate in the green movement, which is – do we encourage alternative private vehicles, or do we encourage alternatives to private vehicles? I tend to think the answer must be both. At times, unfortunately, will be occassions when one goal conflicts with the other.
In a complete contrast to the City of London's announcement, officials in Paris announced the start of an ambitious electric vehicle rental scheme. By the end of 2009, it is anticipated there will be 4,000 electric cars available for hire within Paris following the success of a similar bicycle rental scheme.
For those who are not familiar with London, The City of London is the area that is also known as the “Square Mile” and is but a small borough within central London. The term city of London here does not refer to the entire capital.
© Michael Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
City of London parking concession changes
Rises in gasoline prices could give boost public transport
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
The operators of bus services could benefit greatly from the ever rising gas and diesel prices, according to investment experts.
The ever increasing prices at the filling station pumps for gasoline and diesel are driving commuters out of cars and onto public transport – and bus and train providers should take advantage of the opportunity.
This move would be even bigger, of that I am sure, if the prices would actually be at a sustainable level; one low enough that would make it cheaper for people to use the bus, train, tube and tram, and other means of public transit.
Public transport operators have been offered an opportunity by the increasing numbers of people choosing public transport for environmental reasons, and could make something great out of this if they would now take the jump and reduce the ticket prices, especially the rail prices, which tend to be more expensive – about double if not more – than flying.
Mike Fox, CIS Sustainable Leaders trust fund manager at The Co-operative Investments said: "Commuters now have more than just environmental reasons to leave the car at home.
"The rising cost of filling up at the pumps is leading increasing numbers of people to choose public transport to save money and it is good news for providers."
Arriva and National Express are two companies that are particularly well-placed to benefit from increasing switches to public transport.
If congestion charging is extended to other UK cities, outside of London, public transport could benefit from significant new investment through the Government's Transport Innovation Fund (TIF) of the UK's Department of Transport.
Government funding to the tune of £2.8bn for public transport improvements could be made available through the (TIF). The question is: will it? Is the government prepared to actually invest in public transit, as it is done in other countries.
Transport bosses have promised most improvements would be in place before the charge comes into effect in 2013, including extra trains and buses, better stations, and an extension of the Metrolink.
The question here is, at what cost to the user... for so far every time that there are supposed improvements in the transport system infrastructure the fares rise even higher and higher.
The fact is that the infrastructure, ever since the public transport systems in the UK have been privatized under the Thatcher government, and the service in general, has gone from bad to worse, though some of the new trains are rather good. The fares have risen out of all proportions because of the only thing the companies are were and are really interested in is their bottom line, their profit and how much they can give to their shareholders. I am sure there is another way. In fact there is. Other countries in the European Union prove that.
We need to find the right way to get people back onto public transport and not just because people get forced off the car because of rising fuel costs. We need to make public transport more desirable – for lack of a better word – to all commuters and travellers. For this, aside from good stations and reliable service, the fares must come down to an affordable level. It is simply stupid when a plane ticket to Belfast from London is £45 single when the train fare, return, is about £300. This does not compute. Neither does a ticket from London to Birmingham that by train costs £200+ and the same by plane would work out to about £65 return. Duh? Something wrong here somewhere.
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
'Stop wasting food' says Gordon
British PM Gordon Brown urges the nation to stop wasting food.
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Britons must stop wasting food in an effort to help combat rising living costs, Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom's PM, has said at the G8 Summit in Japan where world leaders discuss rising prices.
The Prime Minister said that "unnecessary" purchases were contributing to price rises, and urged people to plan meals in advance and store food properly.
The biggest problem, as I have said before elsewhere, with people today is that most simply cannot cook meals from scratch properly anymore anyway and that they also do not plan meals. This is due to the way we, nowadays, work and live, and also to the fact that children are allowed to be way too finicky as far as food and meals are concerned. If those two things could be changed then we would be a long way towards reducing food waste.
However, I have seen the way food gets wasted, like during picnics in local parks when there are several garbage bags put next to the littler bins, so the foxes can rip them open, with often still unopened pork pies, sausage rolls, etc. What beats me is why people, who obviously had the means to bring in all the food, cannot take it back home with them for use the next day, as and where possible.
A government study says the United Kingdom wastes 4m tonnes of food every year, adding £420 to a family's shopping bills.
Here I would like to ask though as to whether this data is as doctored as that as to knife injuries that are reported as “knife crimes”, if would appear, in the statistics, and includes waste from restaurants, in the way that the “knife injuries” reported by hospitals and doctors to the authorities also includes accidental injuries with knives, though that info is taken in when briefing the media as to “knife statistics” in the effort to ban knives. But I digressed.
But, the question remains as to whether the data of wasted food includes the waste from hotels and restaurants, and such like? A lot of food is wasted in such places. Every conference and every event that is catered for anywhere, whether the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the Hotels, or the Racecourses, there is food being thrown after every meal; food that has been prepared for the delegates and attendees but that has not been eaten.
The Cabinet Office report claims that up to 40% of food harvested in developing countries can be lost before it is consumed, due to the inadequacies of processing, storage and transport. But what is the excuse in the developed world? We have refrigeration and all that and still we waste tons and tons of food.
The food policy study also says the average UK household throws away £8 of leftovers a week, yet spends 9% of its income on food.
But there is a significant gap between the poorest tenth of the population, who spend 15% and the wealthiest, who pay out 7%.
Those on lower incomes also spend proportionally more on basics such as milk, eggs and bread - foods that have seen the biggest price rises in recent months.
But it is also exactly that poorest tenth of the population, those that are on low incomes or on benefits, that are those that are, today, incapable, of cooking meals from scratch, hence the waste, as they are also, therefore, incapable of reusing any leftovers.
According to the 10-month study, British families are throwing away a total of 4.1m tonnes of perfectly good food every year, costing each about £420 annually.
The UK's Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said that what the government is trying to get across to people is that there is this complex relationship between what we buy, the amount that we buy, the amount that we waste, the impact on climate change and the impact on our health."
But, as Peter Ainsworth, the Shadow Environment Secretary, said it is government departments that should set a better example.
"The amount of untouched food that ends up in our bins is staggering but also financially and environmentally wasteful," he said.
Not only should government departments set a better example, nay they indeed must, if they want to tell households what to do.
While the government is telling households to reduce food waste it has no idea, it would appear, as to how much food it is throwing away itself. This is yet again, as so often with this British government, the Nanny government of “New Labor”, a clear case of the government saying “don't do as we do... DO as we tell you to”. Well, surprise – NOT!
Sustain, an alliance of organisations working for better food and farming, urged supermarkets to stop promoting unnecessary purchases, which they say results in a lot of food "going to waste".
Steve Webb, the Lib Dem environment spokesman, said: "The problem of food waste has been made worse by the government's failure to get tough with supermarkets. Its cosy relationship with the big chains has stalled effective action.
"Supermarkets make it harder for householders to avoid food waste, while throwing away large quantities of edible food through poor stock management.
"They refuse to stock small portions, which are essential for the growing number of one-person households, and offer too many buy-one-get-one-free deals on perishable goods."
But is this not a call for government to be nanny in another field? To me it is. It is the consumer that must ask for change. It is not going to work from above, neither with supermarkets nor with people. Change as regards to the environment and green living and ethical living can only be brought about from the bottom up; it cannot be imposed from on high.
Britain's most wasted foods are potatoes (why, I would like to know?). A whacking 359,000 tons are wasted annually. This is closely followed by bread slices with 328,000 tons, and then by 190,000 of apples.
This waste, such as that with apples, I am sure is still exasperated by farmers being ordered to destroy apples by the thousands of tons during a glut, in the same way as the law is an ass in regards to stores not being permitted to give away food to those that cannot afford it or those that are happy to take it off their hands, such as fruit and vegetables that are coming to the end of their display time.
During my childhood the costermongers selling fruit and vegetable on the markets, instead of being forced to throw fruit and vegetables that were in need to be used immediately gave those away. Oranges, apples, bananas, spuds, and whatever else was given to us kids to take home for our mothers to make meals from and such and none of us ever got ill from the stuff. In fact, I think, that amount of fruit and veg that came that way for free kept us healthy. Nowadays they are forced to throw it away. They are not allowed to even give it away.
Such food, such fruit and veg that today must be thrown away, by law, also and especially adds to the mountain of waste.
While it is unavoidable, at times, as I mentioned in a previous article, for some foods to go off – we may have forgotten that it is there or such – it should, ideally, not happen, however. But... change cannot be imposed from above. People can be and must be admonished, as they were during the years of austerity in the Second World War, and they will definitely stop wasting food as soon as it bites them in the pocketbook.
I know that during World War II is was even a criminal offense to waste food I do not think that we could or should reintroduce such measures but some good campaigns on radio, TV and the Internet might be a good idea, and posters too on the transit systems and on billboards.
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
The fourth “R” of waste management
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Most people, if not indeed all, by now will be familiar with the commonly quoted three “Rs” of waste management, that is to say “reduce, reuse and recycle”.
However, I think that somewhere there must be added a fourth “R”, namely the “R” of “Rethink”.
We must urgently rethink the waste, amount and type that we produce and we also must rethink our approach to and the way that we use, reuse and recycle it.
Reducing the waste we produce is probably the most important step in waste reduction and -management and this applies, basically, to all waste.
The biggest proportion of all of out waste that we generate, from households and elsewhere, is packaging that has no other use and either has to be recycled – if possible and often it is not – or needs to be deposited in landfill or burned in incineration.
The field of packaging is where Rethink must be applied to start with, and this will have to be on at least two levels.
Level one is to actually rethink packaging (and the need for it) all together and to consider how much packaging is actually needed.
I cannot, for the life of me, see the reason for electric toothbrush replacement heads for a Braun electric toothbrush that are already each individually “wrapped” in their own little blister to then having to be encapsulated in yet another big solid blister pack. I also know that this example given here for Braun toothbrushes is but one example of such bad practice and over packaging.
Then there are the supermarkets with their pre-packed vegetables on those dreaded Styrofoam trays and similar packs and wraps.
No one seems to have died, not to my knowledge at least, from ever purchasing goods loose from grocers, as used to be the case with grocers only a few decades ago. You brought your own packaging, that is to say, your own bags, your own jars and your own small milk churn and such along, where your purchases were decanted into or you bought loose dry goods and those were put loose, like sugar, pulses, rice, etc., into strong Kraft paper bags and those bags were often used again at least once after taking the dry produce home in them and that was more often than not as lunch bags for kids going to school and such.
The jars that you took to the store to be filled and the other containers you washed after you emptied the contents or finished the contents and then you took them back for refilling.
Nowadays to buy loose goods, such as rice, beans, peas and such, and even ordinary vegetables in a store is nigh on to completely impossible and do not even try to buy loose sugar, loose salt, loose flour; no chance in that department whatsoever.
If I go and buy a freshly made sandwich – not that that happens often – at a sandwich bar why, pray, do they insist on sticking it into one of those triangular plastic boxes? Why not put it into a good ol' kraft paper bag with a napkin, as it used to be? Rethink time, methinks.
Where, for hygienic reasons or reasons of protection from knocks, tamper, etc. packaging is unavoidable we must apply the Rethink process here to designing, and I have said this before more than once, I am sure, packaging in such a way that it, immediately, has a second and even third life after the first – already designed in.
Packaging could be designed in such a way that it has instructions printed on it (on the indiside) that would show people what second use is intended for the box or such.
Such kind of re-purposing has been designed into packages before, such as the box of a media center that becomes, with a few moves, a shelf unit upon which the center sits, with room beneath for all the paraphernalia, such as CDs, Videos, etc.
Cardboard, though the above mentioned was not just simple cardboard, can, in fact, be very strong indeed, as long as it does not get exposed to rain and such like.
The next biggest item of waste is paper and especially here from factories, offices and educational establishments. The offices of the governments probably churn out the greatest amount of waste paper, but other organizations and companies are not far behind.
Much of the waste generated here should not need to have all that much thinking applied during the Rethink process, as the solutions are often very simple. Paper often is used – that is to say, printed or written upon – on one side only and is then tossed straightaway into the waste that goes to landfill or, if lucky, the paper recycling plant. Why? If the back is clean then use it for scrap paper, turn it through in-house printing, and with computers there is no excuse in not doing it, into notepads, telephone message pads, and other such things. No excuse not to do. Just Rethink required.
As far as food waste is concerned, with the fact that not only it being expensive but there being many, even in our developed world, that go hungry, there should not be any and we should and must Rethink our use of food and how we purchase and also and especially as to reusing leftover food the next day. For many this may mean actually to learn to cook rather than to rely on ping meals.
In order to reuse food leftovers one must have a little – more than a little at times – ideas of how to create meals from scratch. It can be done, believe me. All those of a slightly older generation will be able to agree with me there, I am sure, that their parents did exactly that; use leftovers from the Sunday roast, for instance, with which to create the dinner for the Monday after. Now, with refrigeration and even freezers this is even easier. The problem today only is that a great majority of people are unable to cook meals from scratch. They cannot even use tinned foods to make things with, let alone working with “raw” foods.
When I was growing up, being of a Romany family, we often did not know where the next meal would come from and it often depended on what could be garnered, hunted or found it other ways. We also knew what was edible and good to eat from the hedgerows and other wild and semi-wild places.
The latter may also stay some people in good stead should food get more expensive than it is already.
Already because of the fact that food prices are rising we should make every bit of food go as far as possible.
While we want to no waste food, I do, like all of us, that there will always be some waste, and not just peelings and tops and tails cut off from vegetables. There will always be something that goes off without us wishing this to happen. Any such waste, peelings and gone off food, should then, however, not be thrown into landfill but should be recycled by composting.
Reuse and Recycling
When we now finally come to reuse and recycling the Rethink process also must be applied here.
Reuse
Too many people don't seem to know what to do with the glass jars, plastic boxes and other packaging materials that come their way.
Having seen the lack of ingenuity in people and the only thing that they can think of is to put it into the recycle bin of the appropriate grade, e.g. glass to glass and plastics to plastics, I think that some could not only do with a period of thinking the Rethink but with some ideas and such being sent their way. This may happen at some state in this here magazine and/or as a PDF publication.
Reuse is not only possible without or with some little adaptations here and there with the glass jar and the plastic container but even including some packaging materials, such as cardboard boxes of various types. The use of the old shoebox for the storing of photos and such is an old one, I know. However, there are many other ways of making use of various size boxes that come one's way, in the home and in the office.
Recycling
On recycling there also needs a Rethink process to be employed so as to get some community involvement in small scale recycling – practical recycling – projects where this or that type of waste, or a number of different kinds, are being recycled by hand and such into new items for sale. Example could be the likes of Trashe Bolsas in the Philippines that make tote bags and others from old advertising tarps.
With the right approach and the right Rethink I am sure that there will be many projects that can be created that could bring money to poor people and to those that would like an independent life, away from factory floor or cube farm.
Such recycling could and should be done by small crafts people and crafts co-operatives, the latter that specifically specialize in recycling.
While there is a place for the large-scale commercial recycling there is a much greater place for community livelihood projects based on recycling things and materials into items for sale on markets and elsewhere. Direct practical recycling should be promoted and given priority over the other kind, as the former uses much less resources than the latter and as, generally, done locally also has a much smaller environmental footprint as far as mileage is concerned.
Now, let's start this Rethink process and add this as a fourth “R” to the already existing “Three Rs” of waste management.
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
Use shredded papers as packaging material
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
While it is true that the paper could also be taken to be recycled in to new paper, whether shredded or not, or, shredded, even added into the composter, the problem is that some paper is coated with a very fine film of plastic, probable some kind of polycarbonate which is nigh on unnoticeable and you can even write one that coat with a pen (in most cases ate least), this plastic remains behind in a composter in the form on small strips of plastic tape. For recycling into new also, therefore, such coated paper is unusable, as the laminate and the paper cannot be separated.
However, instead of disposing of your paper shreds, especially those that cannot be recycled in any other way – reasons given above – why not use them as packaging material in the next package you have to send. Those paper shreds work as perfectly well as insulation/protection for anything fragile you may be sending, much like the old wood shavings that used to be used when sending something fragile. That is before the advent of the polystyrene beans. Such shredded paper also works well in “haybox cookery” in lieu of hay or wood shavings.
This, as far as packaging is concerned not only helps the environment by keeping the shredded stuff that cannot be recycled (see reasons) out of the landfill (at least for some time) but also helps the budget as not packaging material is required to be bought.
When sending a package with anything thus securely wrapped enclose a note to the recipient as to why the shredded paper and encourage the other side to retain the shredded material for any stuff that they may need to package securely and safely.
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
CUTTING CO2 EMISSIONS 80% BY 2020 TO AVOID DANGEROUS CLIMATE CHANGE
NEWS RELEASE
WASHINGTON, DC, July 2008 - “When political leaders look at the need to cut carbon dioxide emissions to curb global warming, they ask the question: How much of a cut is politically feasible? At the Earth Policy Institute we ask a different question: How much of a cut is necessary to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change?” write Lester R. Brown, Janet Larsen, Jonathan G. Dorn, and Frances C. Moore in a premiere Earth Policy Institute blueprint, “It’s Time for Plan B: Cutting Carbon Emissions 80 Percent by 2020.”
By burning fossil fuels and destroying forests, we are releasing greenhouse gases, importantly carbon dioxide (CO2), into the atmosphere. These heat-trapping gases are warming the planet, setting in motion changes that are taking us outside the climate bounds within which civilization developed.
We cannot afford to let the planet get much hotter. At today’s already elevated temperatures, the massive Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets—which together contain enough water to raise sea level by 12 meters (39 feet)—are melting at accelerating rates. Glaciers around the world are shrinking and at risk of disappearing, including those in the mountains of Asia whose ice melt feeds the continent’s major rivers during the dry season. Delaying action will only lead to greater damage. It’s time for Plan B.
The alternative to business as usual, Plan B calls for cutting net carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2020. This will allow us to prevent the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, already at 384 parts per million (ppm), from exceeding 400 ppm, thus keeping future global temperature rise to a minimum.
"We need to mobilize at wartime speed," says Brown, President of Earth Policy Institute. "Cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020 will not be easy, but it may be the key to saving civilization." First, investing in energy efficiency will allow us to keep global energy demand from increasing. Then we can cut carbon emissions by one third by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources for electricity and heat production. A further 14 percent drop comes from restructuring our transportation systems and reducing coal and oil use in industry. Ending net deforestation worldwide can cut CO2 emissions another 16 percent. Last, planting trees and managing soils to sequester carbon can absorb 17 percent of our current emissions.
None of these initiatives depends on new technologies. We know what needs to be done to reduce CO2 emissions 80 percent by 2020. All that is needed now is leadership.
Source: Earth Policy Institute
EVOLUTION AND CLIMATE INTENSIFY WEST NILE VIRUS TRANSMISSION
NEWS RELEASE
New York, NY, June 2008: Scientists at Wildlife Trust’s Consortium for Conservation Medicine (CCM), New York, and the New York State Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center report in a paper published today in the journal Public Library of Science Pathogens that warmer temperatures helped a new strain of West Nile virus invade and spread across North America.
The introduction of West Nile virus to New York City in 1999 was accompanied by a die-off of crows and other birds, and 62 human cases, including 7 deaths. In the two years following the introduction, transmission of West Nile virus was relatively low, with only 21 and 66 reported human cases, in 2000 and 2001, respectively, as the virus spread along the Atlantic seaboard. However, in 2002, a new strain of the virus emerged and rapidly spread throughout North America, completely displacing the old strain by 2005. Coincident with the spread of this new strain were two of the largest epidemics of West Nile virus in North America recorded to date, with 11,356 cases in 2003, and 4,582 cases in 2002, including more than 270 deaths in both years. Since then, there have been 2,500 to nearly 6,000 cases and over 100 deaths each year, and the virus shows no sign of retreating.
Dr. A. Marm Kilpatrick, with Wildlife Trust’s Consortium for Conservation Medicine, and the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Dr. Laura Kramer’s laboratory at the New York State Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center conducted a study that examined the impact of different temperatures on the transmission of the two viral strains. They found that increases in temperature greatly accelerated the transmission of the virus by mosquitoes, and showed that the advantage of the new strain increased with warmer temperatures. Thus, warmer climates helped facilitate the invasion of the new strain and its spread across North America. As a result, even a few degrees increase in temperature, such as those currently occurring as a result of global warming, would sharply increase the efficiency of viral replication, and possibly increase the intensity of West Nile virus epidemics in some regions. Crucially, the study provides a model to predict the impact of increasing temperatures on West Nile virus transmission by mosquitoes.
This new research set out to determine how the new strain of West Nile virus had displaced the introduced strain, and what effect temperature had on transmission by mosquitoes. Dr. Kramer explained, “A previous study in our lab demonstrated that the new strains of the virus were more efficient at replicating in mosquitoes, which may have increased the intensity of epidemics seen in the field. We wanted to examine whether temperature might have played a role in the invasion of the new strain, and whether its success may have been related to increasing temperatures.” Dr. Kramer’s lab performed a series of laboratory studies that involved infecting one group of mosquitoes with the introduced 1999 strain of West Nile virus, and siblings with the recently evolved strain, holding the mosquitoes at different temperatures and for different lengths of time, and then determining what fraction could transmit the virus. They found that at 32°C/90°F both strains could occasionally be transmitted as early as 12 hours after feeding on infected blood but the new strain was more efficient than the introduced strain at nearly all temperatures and time points after infection. Dr. Kilpatrick, who analyzed the data and developed models to predict the impact of temperature on transmission, stated, “the results provide a striking example of how climate and evolution can interact to increase the transmission of this virus. They also suggest that relatively small increases in temperature can have large impacts, due to the nonlinear acceleration of transmission with temperature.” Dr. Peter Daszak, Executive Director of Wildlife Trust’s Consortium for Conservation Medicine stated, “This study shows how direct the impacts of climate change could be for us all — it isn’t just about a rise in sea-level or the melting of a glacier in Alaska — it’s also about our health and welfare.”
Source: Wildlife Trust
British government pushes for barges
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Barges are already used to transport waste along the Thames but the government has just discovered that they could be used for freight. Rocket science yet again – NOT. Those barges that transport waste are a different cattle of fish to those that would be of greater benefit to the environment and also the economy, namely the kind of vessels as used in other countries, at least on those part of the system where feasible and the old canal freight narrowboat on the smaller waterways.
The Department of Transport has published a map which shows how the UK's canals and rivers could be better used to carry goods across the country. What took them that long to discover what our ancestors knew already a century and more ago?
It is amazing the things that this government suddenly discovers that have been known for decades, centuries and even millennia.
This current UK government is just about capable of inventing the wheel. What do you mean it has been invented already? First they have discovered that you can burn wood – waste wood – for heat and energy production and now they have discovered canals. This is an extremely worrying trend indeed.
The push to get more freight off the roads and onto far more energy efficient barges is not new but this latest report will give more weight to the arguments of those seeking to sway the nay-sayers.
While the canals and waterways in the UK are in no way comparable in size and carrying capacity – which is rather a shame – to those on the European mainland, such as the canals in the Netherlands, Germany, and such, they can, nevertheless, be a tremendous asset if we would but put them to use (again).
The document, “Key Inland Waterways for Freight”, highlights those areas where the existing network of inland waterways in Britain has the greatest potential for freight services and can fit with the needs of modern freight businesses.
Despite this one can but urge the government to also think about doing something with the other parts of the waterway network in regards to freight (and other) transportation. One should even, where possible, look at the widening of the existing waterways and the deepening of same so that larger barges, much like those in Europe, can be used.
“The role of inland waterways, so Transport Minister, Jim Fitzpatrick said, “in moving freight is already significant, primarily in the moving of construction material, agricultural products, waste and liquid bulks. We would like to see the market build on this success so that we can reduce the environmental impact of moving goods.”
“Our aim is to promote the use of our waterways”, he further stated, “for freight transport where they provide a viable alternative to road freight. The benefit of this is reduced carbon emissions and congestion on the road.”
The report shows that the areas of greatest potential are the larger waterways and river navigations.
I must say that I doubt that it would have needed a report at great cost to the taxpayer that yet again stated the obvious and something that the world has known for years, namely that there is a potential for the canals and inland waterways in this country and it was also obvious to all but the most stupid person that the areas of greatest potential are the larger waterways and river navigations. To talk of blatantly obvious would be an understatement. That should, however, not exclude the smaller canals and waterways that can be navigated by the good old narrowboat. Properly reinstated and run those canals too could and should again play their part.
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
Scrap eco-town plans rural campaigners tell government
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Countryside campaigners are calling on the government to rethink existing eco-town plans.
The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) claims the nation has been misled and the planned eco-towns will not be as green as they seem.
CPRE's Head of Planning, Marina Pacheco, said that to begin with the Commission supported the eco-towns initiative for who would object to exemplar schemes built to high environmental standards which provide the affordable homes the nation desperately needs? However, she said further, that they now believe that they, and the country, have been led astray.
“What will this programme deliver?” she asked. “It appears increasingly to be about spin with very little substance.”
The Green (Living) Review and its editor, this writer, also initially supported the idea of those “eco-towns” but, for some time already, doubts have been cropping into my mind about this, especially as regards to the “forcing” of half of the residents in such towns to not to have a car by basically making it against the statutes for them to have one. Anything that is compulsion like that cannot be supported. It is not ethical to do such things and to compare it, as the government tries to do, with the likes of Freiburg in Germany, mentioning the fact that many people there do not own a car. While this is the case, the residents there decided on their own free will to go without a car. They were not told they could not have one. They, and Germany as a whole, have a much better transit system than does the UK.
The entire thing is nothing but spin but, then again, we have hardly come to expect much else from this so-called Labor government in the UK.
Marina Pacheco said the CPRE's key concerns included siting, with many of the proposals likely to be 'car-dependent housing estates' with no working transport links.
And this is also one of my concerns especially as regards to the people not being permitted to won a car. If those are “housing estate” kind of “eco-towns” a long way, as it would appear, from elsewhere then that idea is not going to work from the start. Or what we are going to find is, what has been talked about in other such schemes in other places, and that are dormitory estates where cars are not permitted to enter. This means that need to be parked outside a certain perimeter at night and whenever, people will cycle or walk to and from home and then use the car to get about the country and countryside. This will defeat the object.
CPRE is also concerned that most of the sites were predominantly greenfield with two actually lying in designated greenbelts.
The organisation also claims that most of the proposed eco-towns go against local plans agreed with communities and therefore have no local democratic mandate with site-selection based on arbitrary, mainly developer-led, bids rather than sound planning in the wider public interest.
It must be said that from all that we have seen over the last years the fact that they may have no local democratic mandate to do any of what they are planning will not stop this government from doing what it wants to do.
"We are urging the government to go back to the drawing board," said Ms Pacheco.
"Many of these shortlisted schemes are recycled, failed proposals. The government insists that eco-towns must be freestanding new settlements. But by refusing to look at alternatives, such as eco-quarters and redevelopment sites already coming through the planning pipeline it is missing a golden opportunity"
Instead of the stupid idea of "Eco-Towns" that will not, in the least, benefit us, we should, nay we must, concentrate instead of greening our existing towns and cities and turning them into eco-towns themselves. This is much more economic as well, and is being advocated by a large number of green architects, planners and developers. It can be done as the achievements in other countries, including the USA, have shown. It can and will work, especially if it is community-led.
Let us green our existing housing stock in our current towns, cities and even villages, build some more needed homes as and where on brownfield sites (they are there, whatever some may like to claim), but let us ditch once and for all the stupid “eco-towns” notion. This is eco-spin and nothing more and about as useful as the eco-button for your PC.
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
Utah to move to a more sustainable four day work week
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Gov. Jon Huntsman announced on June 26, 2008 that Utah state workers will soon only have to work four days a week. But before workers can shout “hurrah” they better read the rest. Most agencies will switch over to four, 10-hour, work days a week. So there is no reduction in working hours per week, as you all will have thought. He fooled y'all y'all.
So, while it is a 4-day week, the 40 hours are still being worked, now 10 hours in a day. For anyone who commutes for a considerable distance to work this will mean even less time at home and with family, with their children.
The "Working 4 Utah" initiative is being welcomed as an energy- and money-saving change for the state. Huntsman says the alternative workweek will formally launch in August.
"It has never been done on the statewide level, so we would be the first state actually rolling this out," Huntsman said. "So, July we're going to be working very closely with departments and agencies making sure we anticipate ... all of the issues and challenges that'll be associated with doing this right."
The new four-day, 10-hour schedule would apply to about 17,000 state workers – about 20 percent of the total state workforce. All those people wouldn't have to commute on Fridays, and the offices where they work – about 1,000 buildings statewide – won't have to be heated or cooled, and lights and computers would be turned off.
It sounds rather good that “all those building do not need to be heated” but the truth is rather different as the heating will still have to be working for, otherwise, in a very cold situation, the electronic infrastructure would not be very happy, to say the least. So, don't jump as yet as regards to huge savings in heating. Even when a building is not used the heating is lest to run, in winter, at a certain level.
The bottom line, according to Huntsman: energy savings and overall efficiency. "When you look at the totality of our needs here, this is a good policy moving forward," he said.
The Department of Administrative Services says closing nearly 1,000 buildings statewide on Fridays could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 3,000 metric tons.
It will also save a lot of money. "We estimate that it can help save somewhere around 20 percent of the cost we're having right now in energy prices and energy usage," said Kimberly Hood, with the Utah Department of Administrative Services.
The governor formally announced this executive order in KUED news conference on June 26, 2008. State officials say they'll be watching for the benefits, which may include employee flexibility and higher worker morale.
Somehow I doubt the “higher working morale” for, as said earlier, people now will be away from home so much longer. Instead of the normal 8 hours a day worked now it will be 10 hours and I don't know whether this includes or excludes the lunch hour. If not then we are looking at someone being 11 hours at works, really, and with say an hour commuting into work and an hour going back home, which is probably the average minimum, we are talking 13 hours so, someone leaving home at 7.30am to get to work by 9am with a little time to spare, will not get home until at least 8pm if not later, unless, and I did not see that mentioned, the State of Utah intends to start work at 8am or 7am even to make up for that. Again, I personally doubt the “higher working morale”.
"This is going to be a one-year pilot program that we take a look at. We'll make sure that we'll have the results that expect it to have," explained Jeff Herring, with the Utah Department of Human Services.
There are other issues to be ironed out: child day care questions, availability of public transportation, second jobs and school. All these are concerns for the Utah Public Employees' Association, the state workers' union.
"We want to make sure the public is served and that the taxpayer is served. And we want to make sure that public employees are able to do that efficiently. And being closed on Friday, is that going to create a burden? We don't know," said Audry Wood, with the Utah Public Employees' Association.
The new schedule includes all state agencies that are now open regular Monday-Friday business hours, like the Division of Motor Vehicles. It does not include state agencies currently open on weekends.
Because of the nature of their jobs, state troopers, corrections employees, courts, higher education and legislative workers are not included.
"The state courts are very supportive of Gov. Huntsman's initiative to conserve energy and improve air quality," said Utah State Court Administrator Dan Becker. "Like certain other functions of state government, the courts must remain accessible Monday through Friday to ensure compliance with statutory time frames for required criminal and juvenile proceedings."
The "Working 4 Utah" initiative will be critically evaluated following the one-year trial period to allow for any necessary adjustments in the future.
What would be a real breakthrough would be if the Governor had decided that those people that could would work from home for half the week or so. I am sure that the saving would be the same if not even better, especially as there would be even less cars on the road.
Yet another idea that has not been, it would appear, properly thought through. Similar to the schemes that are being devised left, right and center in the UK and which turn out to be so cockeyed that it is just unbelievable. Every government, every politician, every country and every business as well, so it seems, want to do something green, mainly in order to be seen to be doping something green. This, I am afraid to say, is getting us nowhere.
Time for to take a real deep breath and think things through very slowly and carefully before we run and try to do things that may not benefit at all – like the planned Eco-Towns in the UK, that are now coming under fire for being ill conceived, for example.
© M Smith (Veshengro), July 2008
