Yearly Archives: 2024

Flying shame: the scandalous rise of private jets

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/26/flying-shame-the-scandalous-rise-of-private-jets published 26 Jan 2023

Rishi Sunak boards an RAF plane to travel from London to Leeds. Photograph: No 10’s Flickr account

Last week, Rishi Sunak flew from London to Blackpool – his third private jet trip in 10 days. He’s far from the only one using air travel for short journeys. Just how much damage is this doing?

It was a Labour spokesperson who said the prime minister was behaving “like an A-list celeb”, after Rishi Sunak made his third trip by private jet in 10 days. Last week, he flew from London to Blackpool in a 14-seat RAF jet – a 230-mile journey that would have taken about three hours by train. The week before, he did the same to Leeds, which he could have done in two and a half hours by train, but which wouldn’t have looked nearly so glamorous – to go by the ludicrous photograph of him looking important and being saluted as he boarded the aircraft.

Private planes are up to 14 times more polluting, per passenger, than commercial planes and 50 times more polluting than trains, according to a report by Transport & Environment, a European clean transport campaign organisation. “It goes against the fact that the government has committed to net zero by 2050,” says Alice Ridley, a spokesperson for the Campaign for Better Transport. “They have said they want to see more journeys by public transport, walking and cycling. Taking a private jet is extremely damaging for the environment, especially when there are other alternatives that would be far less polluting and would also be cheaper.”

Private planes carry far fewer passengers, while about 40% of flights are empty, simply getting the aircraft to the right location. Flying short distances also means planes are less fuel-efficient.

“A private jet is the most polluting form of transport you can take,” says Matt Finch, the UK policy manager for Transport & Environment. “The average private jet emits two tonnes of carbon an hour. The average European is responsible for [emitting] eight tonnes of carbon a year. You fly to the south of France and back, that’s half a year in one trip.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/26/flying-shame-the-scandalous-rise-of-private-jets published 26 Jan 2023

Continue ReadingFlying shame: the scandalous rise of private jets

Green surge in Bristol makes them main challenger to Labour now

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https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/green-surge-bristol-makes-main-9390990

Green Party’s Carla Denyer arrives at the count (Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC) [Ani Stafford-Townsend is immediately to the right of Carla Denyer.]

As well as Bristol’s first-ever MP, the party finished second everywhere else

A Green surge right across Bristol not only saw the party’s first-ever MP in the city, but also saw voters put them in second place in every single other constituency.

The Green Party are now officially the main challengers to Labour in all five of Bristol’s constituencies – after Carla Denyer’s victory in Bristol Central was followed by strong support right across the city. A total of 65,762 people voted Green in the five Bristol constituencies.

In Bristol East, the Green Party candidate Ani Stafford-Townsend won more than 30 per cent of the vote to cut Labour’s majority down to just 6,606, while in Bristol South and Bristol North West, the Greens leapt from fourth place last time around to second.

Victorious Green MP Carla Denyer, the party’s co-leader, showed that her success – which was matched by Green wins in three other constituencies around the country – meant that people could vote Green and potentially get a Green MP.

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https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/green-surge-bristol-makes-main-9390990

The article is from a Bristol newspaper. The “the party finished second everywhere else” refers to everywhere else in Bristol.

Comments by dizzy: These comments may get extended and elaborated.

This article highlights a recurring theme in many analyses of the 2024 General Election: That the Green Party are the ruling Labour Party’s main threat.

The Green Party were mistaken in restricting their ambitions i.e. targetting only 4 seats. This article suggests that another 4 were within reach and to succeed in your goals suggests that those goals were too lax.

The rest of these comments is difficult because there are so many unknowns.

I would expect the Greens to do extremely well at the next General election. That’s assuming that general elections in the same way will be held in 4 or 5 years time.

The World is warming at a seriously alarming rate. Climate change is now and needs immediate action. The action needed is to stop burning fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy that doesn’t damage the climate. There are also other necessary measures: basically stop the rich trashing the planet with their ridiculously climate expensive lifestyles.

People are going to get very angry when they realise how their climate and future has been destroyed by a few rich cnuts.

later: The next few years are going to be extremely demanding, certainly beyond the capabilities of prospective presidential candidates.

… to be continued, elaborated, extended

Continue ReadingGreen surge in Bristol makes them main challenger to Labour now

13 Months of Record-Smashing Heat Called ‘Another Red Alert’ for Humanity

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Rescuers carry away a man, affected by the scorching heat, on a stretcher as Muslim pilgrims arrive to perform the symbolic “stoning of the devil” ritual as part of the Hajj pilgrimage in Mina, Saudi Arabia on June 16, 2024. (Photo: Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images)

“This alarming record underlines the need to urgently phase out fossil fuels, and to hugely increase climate finance,” said one campaigner.

Scientists on Monday underscored the urgent need to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy following the publication of data from the European Union’s climate change monitor showing that last month was the hottest June ever recorded and that 2024 is likely to be the planet’s hottest year on record.

Each month since June 2023 has been the hottest since records have been kept, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said last week in its latest monthly bulletin.

According to the agency, June “was 1.50°C above the estimated June average for 1850-1900, the designated preindustrial reference period, making it the 12th consecutive month to reach or break the 1.5°C threshold.”

“European temperatures were most above average over southeast regions and Turkey, but near or below average over western Europe, Iceland, and northwestern Russia,” C3S noted. “Outside Europe, temperatures were most above average over eastern Canada, the western United States and Mexico, Brazil, northern Siberia, the Middle East, northern Africa, and western Antarctica.”

“Temperatures were below average over the eastern equatorial Pacific, indicating a developing La Niña, but air temperatures over the ocean remained at an unusually high level over many regions,” the agency added.

C3S Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement Monday that “even if this specific streak of extremes ends at some point, we are bound to see new records being broken as the climate continues to warm.”

“This is inevitable unless we stop adding greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the oceans,” he stressed.

In an interview with The Associated Press published Monday, C3S climate scientist Nicolas Julien called the new data “a stark warning that we are getting closer to this very important limit set by the Paris agreement.”

“The global temperature continues to increase,” he added. “It has at a rapid pace.”

Zeke Hausfather, a researcher at the California-based nonprofit Berkeley Earth, told Reuters, “I now estimate that there is an approximately 95% chance that 2024 beats 2023 to be the warmest year since global surface temperature records began in the mid-1800s.”

As Reuters reported Monday:

The changed climate has already unleashed disastrous consequences around the world in 2024. More than 1,000 people died in fierce heat during the Hajj pilgrimage last month. Heat deaths were recorded in New Dehli, which endured an unprecedentedly long heatwave, and amongst tourists in Greece.

“This is not good news at all,” Aditi Mukherji, who co-authored the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, told The Guardian.

“We know that extreme events increase with every increment of global warming,” she added, “and at 1.5°C, we witnessed some of the hottest extremes this year.”

The Guardian surveyed hundreds of IPCC authors earlier this year. Three-quarters of them said they expect Earth to heat by at least 2.5°C by the end of this century. Half of the surveyed scientists expect temperatures to rise above 3°C by 2100.

“It is a crisis,” said Mukherji, and one that has a clear solution, given that burning fossil fuels is the leading cause of global heating.

Antonia Juhasz, a senior researcher on fossil fuels at Human Rights Watch, told Nation of Change that “as a result of the burning of fossil fuels, heatwaves are becoming more common, and intense heatwaves are more frequent.”

“We can break the cycle, we can make oil companies stop burning fossil fuels,” she added.

Reacting to the latest C3S data, Amnesty International climate adviser Ann Harrison said on social media that “this alarming record underlines the need to urgently phase out fossil fuels, and to hugely increase climate finance.”

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading13 Months of Record-Smashing Heat Called ‘Another Red Alert’ for Humanity