Personally I have some general reservations about video as a medium for wide dissemination of what purports to be serious academic work (though it’s great for DIY, etc).
The internet in general is excellent here, precisely because hyperlinks enable you to immediately check sources - but video takes away this inter-activity (and of course the interactivity of a real lecture, where you can ask questions, etc).
There seems to be an inverse relationship between academic ‘success’ as a youtuber and the dismal thinness of your actual published work (Jordan Peterson being the obvious exemplar).
The failure of governments to introduce a ‘frequent flyer’ levy is particularly stupid - it’s well worked-out, easy to implement and obviously just.
Everybody could have say 1 or 2 flights a year tax free, but then an escalator would kick in, so that every additional flight would become more expensive. It’s a very easy way to allocate the real cost to those doing the most damage.
But of course the failure is also transparent: it would hit the wealthy, and broach the difficult reality that the whole airline/airport industry (like other dirty industries) has to contract (and for the UK - that it has to work more with close neighbours, rather than be ‘Global Britain’).
I can’t agree on the body shape being the key, plenty of SUV’s like mine bought for practical reasons and equiped with a 1500cc engine when compared to a 3000cc and upwards having to pay the same charge in London. Even the daftest Mayoral employee must know what cubic capacity is? Then there are the hybrid versions used to subvert the charge but have never used their batteries.
You need to know what you are doing in these rolls and clearly that is why some employees suffer from imposter syndrome.
Whilst I agree, object to one thing people are often reject the lot, I am not unhappy to listen to other points of view and make objective review.
That was one chap, clearly you have knowledge of his actions but I was also surprised to listen to Dr Patrick Moore who was Greenpeace and probably studying this longer than most.
Thanks for the link John, but am I right in thinking the date of this talk was 2009? Seems to me the world has moved on since he was talking. And whilst some of it is thought-provoking, seems to me some of his comments were overly simplistic - maybe for the sake of his audience? I kept wondering who is funding him.
Absolutely, as I posted on here several times follow the money. There are more up to date versions, one critical of Greta and another of David Attenborough.
This is a man I trusted during the 70’s and went on many marches.
Another stonking article - By George!
This time surprisingly optimistic - drawing on sociological evidence that, despite the COP disappointment, we are in fact near a political tipping point in Europe that might just achieve the required economic changes…
Yes if you leave out his inaccuracies.
Cobalt again, leaving out that petrochemical companies having been mining it since sulphur was removed from fuel in 2010 wonder where they got it from?
Google:
Norway, Battery electric vehicles made up 77.5% of all new cars in September.
Not sure why this is ‘a dose of reality’ Tim - surely it’s obvious that flying has to cost more - and that potential growth has to be curtailed. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, there’s a very well-worked out (‘oven ready’!) way to approach this - the frequent flier levy - it not only makes those responsible for the most damage pay most for it, it is automatically redistributive (not only do most people in the world never fly, just 15% of those that do fly make 70% of the total flights).
But that’s the point, the reality is the opposite because flight growth is going to increase despite increased costs. Yesterday Airbus announced an order for 255 planes costing over $20 billion so clearly the aviation industry is confident of it’s future.
This is precisely why we need political action to stop irresponsible multinationals.
We have to prove their projections wrong, and their investments wrong-headed.
Thankfully, at this stage they are only projections - and corporate histories are littered with similar mistakes.
I did Bordeaux -Paris -Freiburg- Berlin -Poznan-Gdansk and back by train a couple of weeks ago, it was marvellous, I am planning to go to Vladivostok next, not on the smartipants one
It’s on my bucket list, but having used soviet/Russian public transport fairly extensively in the past I’ll go posh! It’s not the getting there (to Vladivostok) is the getting back that would worry me, unless you got the same train back again. Internal Russian flights not to be recommended
As callous as this may sound, we’ve just had the perfect chance to do this, and lots have gone bust, but instead we (governments) chose to bail many out instead. Perhaps letting more go bust would have been a wiser choice from an environmental perspective, if not a competition and consumer choice one.
