In this video, Dr Steve Smith, who leads on climate science at the UK Committee on Climate Change, discusses climate policy in the UK, the role of science in creating policy, and how emission targets can be met. For more information you can visit the UK Committee on Climate Change website.
Source: OUR CHANGING CLIMATE: PAST, PRESENT…UNIVERSITY OF READING
Reading Borough Council
Strategic Environment, Planning and Transport Committee
Local Transport Plan (LTP3)
Civic Offices
Reading
RG1 7AE
Subject: Reading climate change air-pollution strategy and monthly Car-Free Work-Day
Reading should get on board a monthly car-free work-day!
As part of a car free day every motorised vehicle should be forbidden in the whole of the Regional area; with the exception of public transport, emergency services, buses and minibuses, taxis and public vehicles of authority (office, transfer of funds, collection of garbage). Certain people can for exceptional reasons benefit from passes delivered by the municipality.
A car free day is the opportunity to make motorists more aware of the environmental impact of pollution and allow better use of public space.
Background
Air Quality
Air quality is important for our health, quality of life and the environment. Air pollution is harmful to human health, plants and animals, and also corrodes materials and buildings.
Transport
An effective transport system is fundamental to building sustainable and thriving local communities. The challenge is to minimise transport’s contribution to green-house gas emissions, through reducing the need to travel, encouraging the use of more sustainable modes of transport and alternative energy sources, and reducing congestion
Overall we fully agree with the “Outline Development Framework- Reading Air Quality”, however we believe a Reading monthly car-free work-day is a perfect opportunity to build upon London’s success with their clean air initiative, and create Reading’s own sustainable pathway route for its citizens. We would like to put forward this idea to Reading Borough Council of using the site Reading’s Air Quality Management Area (AQMA) during the period of 2015-2020 as a functional space to let local community groups use street space as a sustainability hub to promote Reading to becoming a greener place to live and work in. The “monthly car-free work-day” will promote various green project solutions and can also be a testing facility for monitoring and analysing local community for the council.
We hope a car-free work-day will lead to a change in behaviour, enabling the community to work towards becoming a zero-emissions society.
A regular car-free work-day in Reading could fuel an International monthly Car-Free Day which could be an astonishing example of traffic development and public realm. Reading has great potential to embrace the sustainable pathway and become a British role-model in climate change (the air is our all urban common) to honour a successful climate change agreement taking place in Paris December 2015.
On behalf of the Climate Change Centre Reading (CCCRdg), as Reading’s leader in the green movement against climate change, we would like to ask you for your consideration of our proposed project to help drive Reading’s bid for a monthly “Car-Free Work-Day”.
This is an event that has been held in cities around the world, with areas being closed off to cars thus encouraging people to use more sustainable forms of transport, such as walking, cycling or public transport. The event challenges people to:
This will help us to achieve our aims of reducing air pollution, developing sustainability and increasing Reading’s green credentials through:
A Car-Free Work-Day has the potential to improve the quality of life in Reading through a reduction in traffic, and therefore noise and pollution, and also make people more aware of how their own actions impact on the environment. It will also increase Reading’s chances of enrolling for the European Green Capital Award in the future.
We want to strive for community usage of the streets in order to preserve its heritage qualities but also as a sustainable landmark for the future.
Balanced and mixed use of our public space between integrated interest groups; people, bikes, public transport and cars is a kind of damage control, keeping the new agenda safe and sustainable. Especially regarding the cars’ use of the public realm, which is still 80% of street space (if you design mixed use streets you design a healthy city). This high percentage for car use needs to drop dramatically to cope with future challenges. For instance if urban neighborhoods could interact and agree (Empowered interconnection) to regular car free days on, life in our citizen communities would improve considerably.
Our main aim is to bring together businesses, the local community, the Government and those who want to learn about Climate Change, in order to create collaborative momentum to reduce CO2, find new solutions to commuting, increase remote working and develop sustainability in the Thames Valley Berkshire, and beyond.
We hope after the first year trial the Reading Borough Council, who have already evaluated future usage of streets as a historic move and i.e. permanent decision for the Thames Valley Berkshire area, will take action and actually do something that will lead us and a small part of the UK in to new pathway for a shift away from fossil fuels promoting the Reading area as one front leaders in traffic development of turning into city status for 2020 and forth coming…
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There are very good reasons to hold community street events in a traffic-free street:
Once the traffic is cleared the space opens new possibilities for community activities, particularly in areas needing regeneration – their image can be improved. Communities of different ethnic origins sometimes use streets in different ways, drawing on their own culture.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your consideration and invite you to consider future meetings with us or events to discuss from a business perspective the challenges set out in new agenda of curbing CO2 emissions and contribute to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC´s proposed reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050, necessary if the world is to achieve and to stay below the 2degree target.
Climate Change Centre Reading (CCCRdg)
17 Newbury Close
Charvil
Berkshire
United Kingdom
www.CCCRdg.org.uk
Contact No: 07447 934700
If the rest of the world follows the example of the Swedish city of Gothenburg, the long commute and work weeks that many face may become a thing of the past. The year-long study will have one group of city employees working for 6.5 hours, while another works for the traditional eight hours a day. A car factory in Gothenburg has already experimented with this model with great results.
I’m not saying that everyone has to offer a 6.5 hour workday for their agents to be happy. I do feel, however, that executives in North America could learn a lot from Gothenburg’s proactive approach to experiment with a solution outside of the standard "nine-to-five" model.
Unfortunately, most of the world’s workforce isn’t lucky enough to live in Gothenburg, and with the ever growing number of commuters in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) where 3C is located, the typical commuter can face a staggering 80-minute commute to and from work every day—one of the longest commutes in North America! And even in other cities in North America, commute times can range from 20 to 45 minutes. Stack that onto an 8-10 hour workday, and you have one frustrated employee.
Spending that much time sitting in grid-lock can take its toll on your tank – and your wallet, since the price of gas is soon expected be twice what it is today. With more and more employees spending their limited budget on gas to commute to and from work, this will doubtlessly lead to less time with their family, which amounts to less sleep, throwing their balance of life into chaos.
The job market isn’t like it was 30 or 40 years ago, where if you lost your job on Monday, you’d have a new within walking distance from your home by Friday. More and more job seekers are being forced to take jobs farther away from home, potentially for smaller wages. Many households report that they spend much of their budget on fuel and car insurance, with less money for food, clothing and activities for their children.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself: Do they have a job that allows for a flexible start/end time? Do you have a technology solution that can allow them to work from the cloud, reducing their time in the office to 1-2 days per week? If a full time solution is out of the question, can a part-time solution be established (1-2 days per week)?
We have worked a “reduced hour incentive package” into a few employee plans within 3C, and preliminary results have already shown an increase in efficiency and productivity, as well as a reduction in sick days.
The year-long experiment involving city employees in Gothenburg only started in April 2014, so it will remain to be seen how it pans out for them.
I encourage you to take a page out of the Gothenburg play book and be proactive with establishing a plan that takes ‘balance of life’ into consideration, while you still can.
Climate Change – Urban areas most at risk
A new report has established that cities now contribute to 37-49% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The report also reveals that urban infrastructure accounts for over 70% of global energy consumption.
The report entitled Climate Change: Implications for Cities – Key Findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report (Cities Summary) includes the following conclusions;
• Many emerging climate change risks are concentrated in urban areas.
• Climate change impacts on cities are increasing.
• The world’s urban population is forecast to almost double by 2050, increasing the number of people and assets exposed to climate change risks.
According to ICLEI President David Cadman, “This Cities Summary succinctly summarises the key implications for urban areas. It is a must read for all local decision-makers”. The report was published jointly by The University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership and Judge Business School and ICLEI with the support of the European Climate Foundation.
To read the complete summary click here
The European Commission has long recognised the important role that local authorities play in improving the environment, and the significance of their high level of commitment to genuine progress. The European Green Capital Award has been conceived as an initiative to promote and reward these efforts.Bristol, European Green Capital 2015 has demonstrated a long term commitment to improving its urban environment. The city has been working since 2000 to reduce its contribution to climate change by developing and delivering a series of strategies and action plans, such as the Bristol Climate Protection and Sustainable Energy Strategy and the Local Transport Plan to 2026.
Rdg CAN!
– Have a well-established record of achieving high environmental objectives.
– Commit to ambitious goals for future environmental improvement and sustainable development.
– Inspire other cities through new ideas, best practices and experiences.
Will your city be the European Green Capital 2017? The Commission has launched its search for the 2017 European Green Capital. The European Green Capital Award recognises cities that are at the forefront of environmentally-friendly urban living. The..
Read more here: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/europeangreencapital/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Will-your-city-2017_Web-Copy-F01.pdf
New research has found that At 18 sites, the Swedish government’s actions have led to sharply increased emissions of greenhouse gases. This comes despite their pronounced high climate ambitions. Their talk of leadership on climate change cannot be seen as anything but empty words that have no basis in the actual policy, write the think tank Cogito.
The UN climate panel has now published two new sub-reports; one on the impact of climate change and proposals for measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. According to the IPCC, it becomes increasingly clear that humanity is causing climate change while our chance to meet the two degree target and avoid an escalating climate change is drastically reduced.
The Swedish government has a high tail carriage in climate policy. The government writes in its latest climate bill in 2009 that “the two-degree target is the starting point for the measures now need to be taken” and that “Sweden should show leadership by what we do here at home, at work as well as in the EU and internationally.”
All 18 areas:
1. Government has little ambition and unclear goals for climate policy
2. The Government does not seem acting for sufficient climate goals in Europe
3. The Government conducts not proposed measures from their own climate investigations
4. The Government does not have a roadmap to Sweden without climate emissions by 2050
5. The Conservatives appeared and stopped the proposal to strengthen the EU’s emissions trading scheme
6. The Government sold the surplus of allowances (Offsetting)
7. The Government has scrapped the CO2 tax for cogeneration in industry
8. The Government does not coordinate traffic planning with climate objectives
9. Government approves new traffic construction of Stockholm
10. The Government allows the expansion of airports and supports increased flying
11. The Government will allow Waterfall’s investments in coal power
12. The Government will let the State pension funds to invest in the world’s largest oil companies
13. The Government subsidizes fossil fuel
14. Government betrays the promise of climate finance to developing countries
15. The Government supported oil exploration in the Arctic
16. The Government saw its own regulatory proposals for reduced meat consumption
17. The Government has scrapped the tax on fertilizers
18. The Government does not support the expansion of solar energy and offshore wind
The government does, however, remarkably little to live up to these climate ambitions. Decision after decision leads us in the wrong direction, which means that Sweden will continue to fall in the Climate Action Network’s international ranking of countries’ climate policies.
The green think tank Cogito In its report the Government’s climate black list examined the Government’s climate policy over the past two legislative periods. We can at 18 sites show how the government’s actions resulted in dramatically increased greenhouse gas emissions. It involves direct political decisions but also for failing to take action when the government had the opportunity. Here we present seven points from the report:
A principle for all climate finance within the UNFCCC is that the money should be additional, meaning that they cannot be taken from the aid budget. Despite this all means that the government used to climate-related assistance taken from the regular aid budget.
The Swedish government says it wants to be a leader in climate work but Cogitos report rather show great reluctance to take the decisions needed to achieve climate goals, both nationally and internationally.
Although we have not taken the figures for the emissions from all the locations surveyed, shows our summary to the government’s actions have led to higher greenhouse gas emissions of at least 25 million tonnes in Sweden during the last two legislative periods. This represents almost half of Sweden’s annual emissions.
If we add in all the decisions that affect global emissions, such as the government’s actions in Waterfalls and National Pension Funds, the greenhouse gas emissions many times greater. The talk of leadership on climate change cannot be understood as anything other than empty words that have no basis in the government’s actual policies and Sweden will thus leave the responsibility to solve the climate crisis to other countries and future generations.
via “The government goes against its environmental objectives and increases emissions” – DN.SE.
Climate Change Centre Reading
STALL EVENT DAY FOR CLIMATE CHANGE CENTRE READING
Climate Change Centre Reading wants to advance and plan the education of the public on the subject of climate change and reach long term sustainability. We hope a new show room in town centre would be a great source of inspiration for new school projects, business and ours. Placemaking can be an excellent entry point to dealing with climate change. Looking to unlock Reading’s green potential – Driving Readings bid for the 2017 European Green Capital Award.
Where in the high street Reading on the 23rd of May
Please see our press release link here: http://media1.tvb-climatechallenge.org.uk/2014/05/Press-Release_Climate-Change-Centre-Reading33.pdf
Togethernessship – All about Placemaking to be truly inclusive and Safeguarding the future; Habitat III in 2016, which will have the overall aim of contributing to a New Urban / Rural Agenda designed for people and places.
“Consider Climate Change in every action”~Climate Change Centre Reading
Time for the topic “Climate News” in the daily news flow
May 12, 2014
DEBATE. Party leaders’ debates is an embarrassing evidence of how little interest the first generation of climate-conscious shows in the subject environment. It writes Helen Rosell who is the writer and composer with great interest in environmental issues.
After only 50 years of intensive industrialization, we have found out that with current politics and lifestyle will pass the 2-degree target and instead are heading for 4 degrees.
We have found out that it means a disaster for all humanity.
We have found out that we already would have to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and that human civilization can not handle 4 degrees (desperate message on 2-degree target, SVT.se September 28, 2013).
We have learned that we are close to many “tipping points” where the climate can shift to a mode of self-reinforcing mechanisms, and never able to recover.
We know that climate change is already negative for food production in the world, crop yields are affected, increasing emissions.
We have heard about the risk of future mass migrations, strife, rising sea levels, fires, droughts, floods, water scarcity, ocean acidification, melting of ice … but there is no policy that indicates that we are on track to break the trend.
Instead, increases carbon emissions in an exponentially rising curve.
SO WHAT? Who cares?
One feature of CLIMATE NEWS in the daily news flow – and no longer would be able to miss the ocean acidification and impoverishment, whisk away the food question or dilemma melting ice affecting the global climate and ecological balance. It would kick start vital debates, bringing the population and provide “the sleeping people” something extremely important to talk about and get involved in. No one could escape the questions anymore.
… Not even the politicians.
What news could well be more important?
Text: Helen Rosell
via Helen Rosell: Time for the topic “Climate News” in the daily news flow.
Published March 28, 2014
How Sweden can reduce emissions for real
Sweden’s emissions of greenhouse gases are increasing instead of decreasing, if we include the aviation and our imported consumption. The government’s response is to hand over responsibility to the consumers. But the government should look at themselves to reduce Sweden’s carbon footprint both at home and abroad, writes Pia Björstrand and Samuel Jarrick, Klimataktion.
SVT’s newscast last Thursday asked Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt a question that he has never had to consider: Why potray the government continually insures Sweden is a climate model with emissions falling, when our overall impact on the climate is actually increasing?
It is quite correct that Sweden’s emissions, according to official UN statistics dropped by 20 percent since 1990. Partly it’s because Sweden early introduced a carbon tax and invested in heating and more, partly due to emissions of heavy industry moved overseas.
If we instead look at our total consumption, the picture is quite different. Then, total emissions increased by 15 percent during the same period, according to the Environmental Protection Agency statistics from 2012. Increased consumption of harmful climate imported goods and services, electronics, meat, long holidays, etc., have eaten up all climate efforts we made at home.
SVT’s story got the Prime Minister therefore asked whether we Swedes really are living more and more climate-friendly. His response: I think we are largely getting more and more tools that enable to reduce our carbon footprint, but then of course there is also a personal responsibility.
Common political commitment
Fredrik Reinfeldt suggesting that it is up to us consumers to ensure that the carbon footprint is reduced. But it is unrealistic to think that we as individual consumers should be able to do what is needed to meet climate challenges. According to a report from the Nordic Council of Ministers, Sustainable behavior must be promoted by the consistent message that is not only conveyed through information dissemination, but also through other strategies, such as infrastructure, marketing, pricing and social institutions. This calls for a common political commitment to the Swedes should be able to reduce their emissions from consumption.
There is an inconsistency in the government’s climate policy. The goal is to reduce emissions by 40 percent by 2020, where a third of the reduction shall be credited by actions in other countries. The government wants to count on the emission reductions our policies help in other countries, but do not want to take any responsibility for the emissions increases that our lifestyle causes in other countries.
Offensive climate policy
With an aggressive climate policies at home, we can tackle this inconsistency. We propose the following actions:
First Environmental Management across central and local government own procurement, where low carbon footprint given a higher priority than low prices, and where businesses are encouraged to sustainable consumption.
2nd Tax / VAT exchanges where low-carbon goods and services enjoy a more favorable tax treatment than carbon-intensive goods and services.
The third the face of a meat tax, slowing imports of climate-damaging concentrate and reduce the use of chemical fertilizers. Decrease in return VAT on vegetable, locally grown and organic food.
4th Facing a climate tariff on imported emissions heavy goods that provide an economic incentive for producers to shift and consumers to choose climate-friendly goods.
5th Replace consumption driven tax cuts, such as earned income tax credits and interest deductions of investments in climate adaptation and green jobs.
6th Count In international aviation in the national emissions statistics.
7th Let more message than encouraging consumption take place in the public sphere. Limit climate malicious advertising.
Stricter ambitions
The level of ambition needs to be tightened considerably even when it comes to the emissions created in Sweden. The decrease is not nearly as fast as is required if we are to take our justice responsibilities to meet the 2-degree target. Climate science shows that in countries like Sweden would have to be almost independent of fossil fuels in the coming decades about the risks of climate landslides are to be avoided.
The transition should be operated on, for instance through aggressive investment and a conscious use of pension funds for more rapid development of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency among residential and industrial.
If we Succeed the government can reduce both our domestic emissions and the imported emissions, Sweden can be a real role model in international climate policy.
Pia Björstrand and Samuel Jarrick
spokespersons for Climate Action
via How Sweden can reduce emissions for real – Debate – Gothenburg Post.
by Stephen Luntz
Photo credit: Staecker. The demise of the Aral sea could be a foretaste of the future if we don’t change the way society works
Our industrial civilization faces the same threats of collapse that earlier versions such as the Mayans experienced, a study to be published in Ecological Economics has warned. The idea is far from new, but the authors have put new rigor to the study of how so many previous societies collapsed, and why ours could follow.
Lead author Mr Safa Motesharrei is no wild-eyed conspiracy theorist. Motesharrei is a graduate student in mathematics at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, a National Science Foundation-supported institution, and the research was done with funding from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
“The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent,” the forthcoming paper states
Two key social features are identified that contributed to the collapse of every civilization studied: “The stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity,” and “The economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or “Commoners”) [poor]”.
If these look familiar, so do the factors that make up the resource side of the equation, with climatic change, and scarcity of water and energy key among them, although for others climate variation was a matter of bad luck, rather than their own actions.
The model Motesharrei used, Human And Nature Dynamics (HANDY), explores the relationship between population and resources, drawing heavily on predator-prey models used by ecologists. Four key factors were included in the model: Elites, Commoners, nature and wealth. Equations of how these interact were created with varying inputs. The outcomes were not pretty. The timing and shape of collapses varied, but the societies that most closely resembled our own doomed themselves, through overuse of resources exacerbated by economic stratification.
In one scenario many commoners do make it into the elite population at year 750, but the “scarcity of workers” caused a collapse by year 1000. In another so many of the Earth’s resources are consumed that society, and the ecology of the planet, are doomed by the year 500.
“It is important to note that in both of these scenarios, the Elites — due to their wealth — do not suffer the detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners,” the paper notes.
If those year numbers seem comfortingly far off, be aware that the year zero in these models is well behind us. Nevertheless, contrary to much of the reporting, the model does not provide a useful timeline for when we can expect to see the world we live in turn into something that resembles a post-apocalyptic nightmare, although studies of the convergence of climate and resource challenges suggest we may witness drastic food crises within a little over a decade.
In every economic bubble people looking back to past crashes are told “this time it is different”. Certainly some things have changed for modern civilization compared to the others Motesharrei has looked at. Technological developments that provide access to greater resources is the most frequently mentioned difference. Motesharrei responds, “Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use.”
One advantage we do have, however, is much greater knowledge of what has gone wrong in the past, and therefore the capacity to build models like HANDY. In a presentation of an earlier draft of this work in 2012 Motesharrei noted, “Simple models provide a great intuition and can teach us invaluable points. It is crucial to have a measure that can give us an early warning of collapse. Carrying Capacity tells us when overshoot happens, and this can be defined by noticing the decline in wealth.”
Some coverage of the announcement has described disaster as inevitable, but that is not the paper’s conclusion at all. “Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion,” it argues.
Although the study has reportedly passed peer review it is yet to be published. It received global attention after a pre-release version was provided to The Guardian.
Update: NASA has issued a clarification stressing that this study does not necessarily represent NASA’s viewpoint. Noting that they fund many studies they stress it “was not solicited, directed or reviewed by NASA”. The funding came about because the project was “utilizing research tools developed for a separate NASA activity.” The clarification points out, “As is the case with all independent research, the views and conclusions in the paper are those of the authors alone.”
via According To A Nasa Funded Study, We’re Pretty Much Screwed | I Fucking Love Science.
