A recent trial, by the police have suggested that a tesla model three may well be a better car for police work, despite many doubters suggesting that it would never be able to handle work like this.
Tesla police car, looks quite normal, though the suggestion was to incorporate the lights into the body of the car to improve wind resistance
The average blue light run lasts between 7-15 minutes, yet the tesla model 3 has been able to take part in runs over 4 hours on active deployment, and it is thought to be possible to do more than 200 miles of blue light advanced driving on one charge.
We have an extensive train network. We also have an extensive motorway network. With all the check in and the traveling to and from airports which are usually some distance outside cities, many domestic flights take longer than their train or car equivalent.
More importantly, these other methods have a fraction of the carbon footprint. This was also after signing a net zero emissions target. Importantly, this does not include travel to Northern Ireland as this is more easy to justify.
34 of these flights were by the minister themselves.
This only came to light through a freedom of information request from the shadow minister for green transport.
In the 6 months after the 2050 net zero target was signed into law the department took 395 domestic flights.
These all happened in the run up to us hosting a conference on cutting emissions.
We can only hope that now the COP26 has happened, the government starts to practice what it preaches.
The film tells the story of a great student who discovers a comet heading for earth.
The film is engaging with a large number of big actors
Despite talking to the right people, nothing useful is done. Like the climate change, many people in the film delay any fight about doing something about it.
Extraction of peat, generally means that it dries up and then releases its huge store of carbon back into the air.
There are vast areas of peat in places like Indonesia, and the DRC, however there are also large areas of peat in Scotland. Peat is full of nutrients and so it is valued by gardeners. Peat will be used by professional gardeners until 2028.
In the UK Peat is our largest carbon store, trapping as much as a tropical rainforest per hectare. They are also important habitats and protect those further down stream from flooding.
This has been known as an issue that the british government has needed to address for some time. In the end, it seems that they failed to address this with the urgency that it requires.
Most of the peat in the UK is imported from Ireland. However, they have banned it so this is soon to dry up. A ban is thought likely to cut emissions over the next 2 decades by at least 4 million tonnes.
It is a good start, but we also need to restore those peats that have already been part extracted. This could keep much of the carbon in the ground if we act fast.
To much fanfare, the British government decided to ban the sale of Ivory 3 years ago. This is certainly a good thing. Unfortunately, they have just delayed its introduction again – and we are already 3 years after this law was supposed to come into effect. Admittedly, this time the delay is only supposed to be for 2 months, but it sends the wrong message.
Forest and Savannah elephant populations across west and east Africa have been decimated over the last decade or two.
Ivory trade is (most of us will be surprised to hear) is still going in the UK, Will lord Goldsmith keep to his promise this year? And how many elephants will die before he does – in the hope of adding ivory to our trade?
Ministers claim that background work has not been carried out, but given they have had 3 years this is inexcusable. Someone should be fired for this.
At the moment elephants are being killed at the rate of one every 15-25 minutes or 50-100 a day. The UK is the largest exporter of Ivory. Also much ivory from recently poached animals is passed off as antique – avoiding the rules.
The EU is now considering acting on this pressing issue. Our original advance has been destroyed, and we now look like we are incompetent.
It is currently down to issues creating the technical standards for exempting legal ivory.
My proposal would be to ban all ivory sale until this system was in place. This would put pressure on people to finish it quickly (and I would be surprised if it wasn’t solved very fast).
Lord Goldsmith wrote in a letter that he committed to enacting the bill by the end of 2022, though similar things were said 3 years ago.
Australia has an incredible range of wildlife. Indeed, a great number of people visit Australia because of this. From their fascinating land mammals -kangaroos and koalas, as well as many more, to the great barrier reef and the wide array of other sea life.
They also have areas of Australia which are already almost unusable, because the temperature is too high. You would think therefore, that conservation would be a high priority. Unfortunately under the current government that is very much not the case.
Rowley Shoals is one of the most intact reefs in the world
From mining projects and farming, wildlife is shown to have low priority. In recent times, a firm was given permission to dump material from dredging inside a marine park (and submerging parts of a coral reef – something that will kill it.
There is a constant argument made by those who like the combustion engine car. They want to add up all the emissions that are released creating the electricity and therefore suggest that the electric car is worse.
This shows that the BMW 3 and tesla 3 are similar sizes, though electric cars tend to be bigger inside
This argument quickly runs into problems: an electric car is so much more efficient that it is irrelavent.
Uganda has suffered during lockdown. As much as 7% of the countries population works in tourism, a sector which has been either totally shut down, or greatly reduced over the last few years. Several other countries like Tanzania have suffered in a similar way.
To protect some of the most special wildernesses in the world we need a better system
How can we expect countries to protect huge ecosystems if the income to protect them can dry up with no warning?
Incredible progress has been made over the last couple of decades towards greening our grid. Coal is now supplying a very small percentage of our power, and this is likely to fully disappear in the next few years. Gas is the only remaining fossil fuel on our grid. We mad roughly 28 gigawats of electricity from gas in 2018 (last normal year before epidemic). There are plenty of ways to get this from clean sources
As an example, 1 megawatt of solar panels takes roughly 4 acres, and costs about 1 million pounds. Therefore, 1 gigawatt would take roughly 7 square miles and cost roughly 1 billion. That means to replace 28 gigawatt hours of gas generation with solar, would cost roughly 28 billion. The batteries would cost about 2 billion for a similar quantity. In terms of area, we would need roughly 150 miles, which is roughly 2/3 of all the rooftops of the UK housing stock. If, however, all UK commercial governmental and industrial buildings have their roofs covered in solar panels, this would likely take a great deal of the capacity needed. Even if you assume we need extra for night time power, we can not be talking more than 50 billion.
I am not saying that the government needs to invest this now. However, as gas powerplants do not last more than about 25 years, we can assume that by 2050 all the current ones would be decommissioned. If as each gas powered plant goes offline it was replaced with solar and batteries, the cost would be roughly £1.8 billion a year while a huge cost to many countries, would essentially be a rounding error in the UK.
Can the human race use the lessons learnt during the Covid epidemic to start addressing climate change as the existential threat that we know it is? Estimates vary as to what the Covid epidemic has cost, but economists estimate roughly $28 Trillion. Now while that sounds huge, it is only about 1/3 of global output annually. Given that Covid has taken place over around 2 years, that means an output reduction of less than 20%.
Now it is true, that governments around the world have spent vast amounts money propping up economies and trying to avoid as much of the pain as possible.
Climate change is predicted to cost about $23 trillion per year by 2050!
In other words, economists are predicting that in 28 years, we will have to find almost the price of fighting Covid – every year (remember that the Covid costs have been spread out over 2 years).
CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT?
We are marching towards a future, where we pay out almost the whole cost of COVID every year, to mitigate the effects of climate change.
