Not eating beef, generally going vegetarian, not flying, eating locally produced seasonal food and rejecting single-use plastics are all pretty simple. Driving only when absolutely necessary is harder - society is built around cars - but it's a critical change to make.
Do you care enough to accept that flying to the Alps to ride a bike is something in the past? That driving up to Scotland to ride a few times a year isn't compatible with all this?
'The Age of Stupid' was made 13 years ago now. And here we are..
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1300563/
And who pays the subsidies? It needs to be widely adopted or it won’t work. So solutions need to be affordable by almost everyone and subsidised only for the poorest 10-20% of the population. So sny solution for the majority of the population needs to be affordable without subsidy or we are all just subsidising ourselves. At the moment it is the better off who are being subsidided by everyone else to buy EVs.
Well how do you pay for anything?
I'd be happy to tax the arse of the wealth horders, go after their off-shore holdings etc, maybe stop subsidising their Teslas, double fuel duty and bump up VED on the Landy they use on their estate at the weekend? like I said Wealth inequality is as much a root cause as anything.
I agree any subsidy it needs to be accessible to those most in need, right now your roof is an untapped resource whatever your income bracket. Perhaps you don't own the solar panels on it, maybe the organisation that does pays you a percentage back for every KWH generated and fed back to the grid or into storage???
How you pass benefits on to renters is a further discussion, but we often seem to get into these debates and end up not taking an opportunity because any money/saving derived has to be channelled to the 'right' people and get more caught up in that than doing something because it's overall beneficial...
Anyway covering household electricity use for daylight hours 9 months of the year is only a small slice of the pie. Heating in winter is the big part and solar will contribute very little towards that. Last March our energy was 262Kwh electricity and 1892Kwh gas. Currently UK solar covers around 9% of demand for 6 hours a day and will be less over the next few months.
It does feel like there's a lot of surfaces pointing up at that shiny sky Orb that we could shove a panel on still, 9% during daylight hours seems pretty good as a 'slice' considering how little solar PV there is relative to roof spare in the UK currently.
Like I said the wealthy already seem to be taking advantage by farming the solar-leccy.
Coupled with better insulation to drive down heating energy requirements, you could put a dent in the nations consumption requirement and chip something back into our energy security...
More nuclear is the answer to burning less gas.
As I said after saying we should do more solar and insulation, but building a nuclear power station isn't quite as easy as chucking up more PV panels and kingspan, and we're after the low hanging fruit first here...
rejecting single-use plastics
that bit is actually really difficult, unless we want to reduce the safety of pharmaceutical and medicinal items, single use items are actually more energy efficient than stainless steel, glass and autoclaving for sterility, independent full Life cycle analysis studies have found that cleaning and sterilization are the largest contributors to energy use in pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities, And stainless steel equipment, despite being reusable, needs large amounts of heat and water to ensure it is sterile for the next batch. In addition, chemicals used to clean equipment are eventually released into the environment, which can have a negative impact on ecosystems.
Overall, the environmental impact from producing, using and disposing of single-use equipment is significantly lower than traditional stainless steel. This was found to be the case across all impact categories, including climate change, human health, ecosystem quality, resource consumption and water consumption.
so its more a case of selecting the areas where single use plastic and recycling is actually beneficial over the alternatives and then banning uses where its not required.
People aren’t sitting in traffic jams or squeezed into overcrowded trains out of choice.
yes they are. They made a choice to live where they did and to take that job.
largely because of their birthdate no less.
As comes up time and time again - do you believe you would be living where you live now had you been born in 1982 doing the same job you did pre retirement.
maybe if these pesky youngsters didn't eat all the avocado toast they could afford a house closer.
Ban second homes.
Ban student rental housing, they have to have halls accomodation provided by establishment.
Ban private renting of homes.
do you believe you would be living where you live now had you been born in 1982 doing the same job you did pre retirement.
I would still be living in a muscle power distance of my work. This is non negotiable for me
Might not quite meet the OPs brief but autonomous vehicles.
do you believe you would be living where you live now had you been born in 1982 doing the same job you did pre retirement.
I would still be living in a muscle power distance of my work. This is non negotiable for me
do you believe you would own this house or be stuck on the rental market.
Ideology is great when your beyond it.
If we’re going crazy how about a lifetime kWh consumption allowance? Once it’s been used up you get euthanised and burnt for fuel.
THat would also solve the monarchy question and most of the land owners of the country as they would probably hit their lifetime consumption allowance by the age of 10
Might not quite meet the OPs brief but autonomous vehicles.
The cost of developing and building the infra and then the vehicles to do this on a widescale basis is more than any benefits gained.
They work small scale or in controlled environments - loads of factories use AI systems, small scale robots etc but releasing actual passenger carrying cars into a public realm and expecting them to be *fully* autonomous means basically rebuilding all of society.
Tesla prove this quite frequently when yet another of their super smart cars crashes and kills someone. Or catches fire.
Autonomous lanes on motorways are the easiest obvious "half way house" but currently there's a supply/demand issue where there's no point building it cos the tech isn't really there yet.
Insulated kettles with a adjustable boil control.
Sensor / button activated street lighting.
Cars in street lit areas to use sidelights only.
These would make very little difference.
Most times when you boil a kettle, you use the water immediately. You should be only boiling enough water for what you need, there really won't be much benefit from having an insulated kettle.
The primary reason for street lighting is safety. There would be serious political resistance to reducing it to save a fairly trivial amount of energy.
Car headlights use a trivial amount of energy compared to powering the car. The reduction would be barely measurable.
If you want to make a serious difference in energy consumption, insulating old houses and getting people out of cars will make a much bigger difference than messing about with kettles and streetlamps.
Autonomous lanes on motorways are the easiest obvious “half way house” but currently there’s a supply/demand issue where there’s no point building it cos the tech isn’t really there yet.
I'd love to see road trains where a series of trucks can link up wirelessly, all being controlled via the front driver. With no "thinking distance" they can tailgate each other and drastically cut fuel consumption. Would need to limit the lengths of these trains to allow other vehicles on at junctions though.
My friend spent a year researching the effects of a force feedback throttle pedal for HGV's, adjusting the resistance of the pedal to facilitate more economical driving style. Thats the lengths the haulage industry is willing to go to to save fuel.
Okay a fair few things that the gov could do straight away to steer people in the right direction, but as per posting these are just the low hanging fruit and most of them already mentioned:-
Subsidise insulation materials & strictly enforce building regs.
Subsidise more eco housing to drive away from "detached" being the ideal.
Subsidise small electric vehicles - fiat 500 size being largest.
Ration household power use, soon as you get above current national average use for your type of property price per kWh goes up by 50%
Increase fuel duty back to what it would have been before green escalator was scrapped.
Subsidise (but not free) public transport so it is always cheaper than driving.
Make town & city centre parking more expensive - including taxing work place parking.
Insulate more houses. It's a complete no brainer. Not just fluffy damp inducing cavity backfills, proper external boarding for all the rest of us, same for lofts, proper boards between trusses, not just some fluff in the ceiling.
rising rate of cost/kwh on energy use. average 2.4 kids family is the border between low rate and high rate
plastic tax hit for any disposable consumer item packaging
restart the incentives for installing solar, home battery installs, etc
If we’re going crazy how about a lifetime kWh consumption allowance? Once it’s been used up you get euthanised and burnt for fuel.
These would make very little difference.
Most times when you boil a kettle, you use the water immediately. You should be only boiling enough water for what you need, there really won’t be much benefit from having an insulated kettle.The primary reason for street lighting is safety. There would be serious political resistance to reducing it to save a fairly trivial amount of energy.
1,270,000,000 kWh used from boiling kettles each year in the UK. That’s pretty much enough to power every single street light in the UK for a year. Kettles with temp controls, insulation and only using what is needed. Estimated 25% energy loss from the design and
materials used in a kettle.
Doing a shit tonne of seemingly trivial things will have a big impact and be a gateway for people looking to do less trivial things. Eating less meat and checking how your pensions and savings are invested are two really simple things everyone can do that will make a big difference.
If we are reducing the numbers of children and killing off everyone over 65, why are we doing all this?
Because the vast majority of these changes are things we should be striving for anyway. Why wouldn’t we want a fairer, cleaner and greener world? What’s the downside?
Edit - Double post
tjagain
yes they are. They made a choice to live where they did and to take that job.
I would still be living in a muscle power distance of my work. This is non negotiable for me
Do you think it's everyone else's job to support you refusing to work because it involves a bus ride?
Unless I'm mistaken you don't have a partner either but you'd presumably leave a lifelong partner who lost their job and only had an option of working in another place and split the kids if you had them?
It's a great luxury for a few to just refuse to work unless it's convenient but who is then going to pay for you to not work?
Okay a fair few things that the gov could do straight away to steer people in the right direction, but as per posting these are just the low hanging fruit and most of them already mentioned:-
Subsidise insulation materials & strictly enforce building regs.
That's a bit pointless for me...
Building Regs say I can't insulate under my floors unless I block the airflow as I can't get the regulation thickness hence according to building regs I have to not insulate.
I did anyway .. but perhaps what we need is more sensible building regs?
Promotion of air-to-air heat pumps i.e. split air conditioners. They are around 4-5 times more efficient than direct electric heating and even more efficient than air-to-water heat pumps. They can be installed at a fraction of the cost of an air-to-water heat pump and can supplement an existing system.
They are often stigmatised as a problem when in fact they are a part of the solution.
The pandemic worked quite well at reducing co2 emissions, how simple is it to implement another one?
I miss those clear skies and quiet roads.
Might not quite meet the OPs brief but autonomous vehicles.
Might be a while...
https://www.ft.com/content/cf443342-fb39-4877-bedd-3385f33be062
I’d love to see road trains where a series of trucks can link up wirelessly, all being controlled via the front driver. With no “thinking distance” they can tailgate each other and drastically cut fuel consumption.
If you removed the rubber tyres and put some rails down (much less rolling resistance), you could actually link the trucks up directly and just have one engine at the front, thus saving even more fuel.
Instead of it being a road train, as it's running on rails, you could maybe call it a railway train.
Novel idea, maybe I'll suggest that - I reckon it could catch on. In fact, as well as some of the trains carrying freight, you could maybe make some carriages with seats and tables and things in order to carry many many car passengers at once!
1,270,000,000 kWh used from boiling kettles each year in the UK. That’s pretty much enough to power every single street light in the UK for a year.
1. Where did you get those numbers from?
2. The major thing with a kettle is that you have to heat water to boiling point. You can't reduce the amount of energy needed to boil water, it's a physical constant. Boiling only as much water as you need will make a huge difference, insulating a kettle only a small difference. All the electric kettles I've used in the last 20 years are plastic anyway, so they are safe to touch with your hand. That means that they are pretty well insulated. Very little to be gained there.
I know the focus is always on population control at the start of the process, but I reckon it makes more sense to trim it down at the far end, once people have served their usefulness. In an ageing population old people are a massive drain on resources.
I mean, sure it's a massive ethical problem, but just as valid as targeting parents with more than one kid.
autonomous vehicles.
The lead researcher at Honda has suggested that the search for autonomous vehicles is in fact the search for functioning AI. I don't think that meets the criteria for "simple"
I know the focus is always on population control
There's many population scientists who think that the rate of global population increase will decline in the near future and the population naturally shrink anyway. In fact the huge expansion of the 20th C has already stopped We already produce enough food for everyone, I think population control is not the most pressing concern
Where did you get those numbers from?
2. The major thing with a kettle is that you have to heat water to boiling point.Quick Google search and you don’t have to boil the water.
yes they are. They made a choice to live where they did and to take that job.
I happen to work reasonably local as does my missus currently, but I'm afraid local 'choice' of employment isn't as straight forward as you make out.
Employee's personal circumstances and employing organisation's reasons for where they locate themselves seldom align perfectly. Someone's personal circumstances may have 'trapped' them in a specific location where there isn't work, the ability to just pick up and relocate closer to some work is limited by income/savings... what do you do then? People are very much slaves to circumstance not the other way round.
If you want to abolish commuting you're about 70 years too late...
There are very few jobs for life anymore and if you find your employment changing frequently, causing you to have to relocate frequently that sort of knackers opportunities to put down roots or establish somewhere as your home, rather than become some sort of pay-cheque nomad...
Autonomous lanes on motorways are the easiest obvious “half way house” but currently there’s a supply/demand issue where there’s no point building it cos the tech isn’t really there yet.
Or, hear me out on this, some sort of large vehicle able to take lots of passengers along a set route that drops them in locations close to where they might want to be. If you have concerns about the operator's ability to steer you could put them on rails of some sort...
What am I saying? Crazy talk! We should all be spending 10's of thousands on private vehicles...
If you have concerns about the operator’s ability to steer you could put them on rails of some sort…
@cookeaa - see my following post, top of this page... 😉
Stop producing goods that simply are not needed.
To do this, a shift in culture is required which means hefty educational input over a reasonable period of time.
If big pharma production is so polluting, we need to get to the root cause of why we are needing to manufacture so many different products in such vast quantities. Is it because people are generally more unwell or becoming more reliant on drugs to help them?
Then let's find a way to help prevent people being ill more often. Better diet? More active lifestyle? Reduced pollution?
Needs a shift in culture.
We're too reliant on using cars these days, myself included. I'd love to be able to walk/cycle to work, but the job I'm in pays reasonably well and I won't get that kind of job in my hometown or the next. We can't move closer to my job because my children will then be further away from me, I'd end up using the car more. But over a number of years, educating people to reduce usage, changing stance on employment pay rates so that we don't have to go to specific areas to earn extra. Is that a possibility?
I was talking with Mrs Fezza the other day about reducing our use of plastic packaging. Occurred to me during shopping where 90% of everything we buy has some form of plastic packaging. Why is this? Ultimately it is convenient and cheaper. So we need to change the way we think about the need to have everything so convenient. More shops that offer decent food that can be deposited into containers brought in by the consumer. Generally these types of shops are more expensive at the moment. Culture change needed.
Drinks containers, we were in Sheffield Friday and Manchester Saturday. I had thought about taking a refillable bottle to top up with water. But I had absolutely no idea where or how this could be done. Change of culture so people can go somewhere to have water/fizzy drinks/pop available on tap instead of buying a new bottle every time. We can do this with coffee why not other drinks, I don't want coffee/tea most of the time.
I mean - we could just stop subsidising fossil fuel use as a basic start?
Good call squirrelking! We need to build a galactic empire and then kill all the horses
If we all stopped drinking hot drinks it would save a load of energy.
Stop building big, glass boxes for people to sit in. Windows are the weak link in building design, they let the heat out in winter and overheat buildings in summer, meaning aircon use. Restrict window/wall ratios on new builds (especially office blocks) with mandatory high efficiency glazing, and subsidise triple glazing upgrades for existing buildings. You could wrap your house in 3ft of insulation, but if the windows are crap it'll make no difference.
We all wear insulated onesies and leave the heating to 16C.
Label all your electrical equipment/appliances with big labels with its load rating in Watts.
Another kettle one. Only boil the amount you need, it's amazing that some folk fill the kettle everytime they use it.
No baths allowed! Unless you go old school and share the water. Bagsy first!
Turn off all the lights. Everyone is to go about like they're out of Metal Gear Solid. Night vision goggles will be all the rage with the youth.
This one is for my neighbours..... Walk the 200 metres to Tesco to buy your morning paper.
Ban company fuel cards. I fuel cards encourage folk to drive as they've been taxed.
Hibernation! Who wouldn't want to snooze for 3 months.
But if you want more than one kid, you’re part of the problem. Too many humans for our desired consumption is the ultimate cause of most of our issues. We need a few billion at absolute most – and we’re heading rapidly towards 9 billion – which is way more than the earth can ever support sustainably.
Have less kids. Stop making it easy for people who want more than 1.
Exactly. If you have more than one kid you should pay extra tax.
If there were less people we wouldn't have to build crap houses on arable land then have to import food.
Put doors on supermarket fridges 🤷♂️
Everyone eat insects instead burgers 🤢
How about not flying in lamb from the other side of the 🌎
How about not having everything made in the far east. How about make stuff in the near east?
If you want every couple to have one kid you better get used to one of two things:
1. Massive immigration of people willing to look after you when your old.
2. Get used to metal Micky wiping your frail arse.
You do realise that the TV programme Distopia wasn't real?
If you want every couple to have one kid you better get used to one of two things:
1. Massive immigration of people willing to look after you when your old.
If you can't look after yourself, time for the heroin + cliff solution.
It *has* to be less children - because it's lifetime consumption that's the problem. Offing oldies who subsist on salmon paste butties and shortbread isn't saving anything.
Maybe anyone who gives birth to a second child should have their first child shot in the face next to the birth bed?
Simple and fair. Thanos would approve.
Only one personal flight per year unless it’s to see family. After that, you pay full fuel duty on the fuel used for your seat on the plane.
On a thread with many idiotic suggestions, this one is right up there 😂
