Submission to the Public Inquiry on the 2018 York Local Plan
I believe this submission on the York Local Plan addresses issues of worldwide importance. Worrying climate feedbacks are mentioned in the accompanying document The York Local Plan: Climate Change. These climate feedbacks are eating into the remaining carbon budgets. Keeping to these budgets is one of the few ways to stop climate change becoming completely out of control. These are described in a video on “cascading tipping points” in the video by Paul Beckwith [1].
In How robots change the world, Oxford Economics ignored climate change. Their report contains some interesting conclusions about how robots will destroy jobs by replacing workers while creating other jobs by generating economic growth.
My previous post discussed a recent report from Oxford Economics,which discussed the replacement of workers by robots. It predicted that on average 1.6 workers will lose their jobs for every industrial robot installed. However, the introduction of robots will generate economic growth and create jobs:
Our study shows that the current wave of robotization tends to boost productivity and economic growth, generating new employment opportunities at a rate comparable to the pace of job destruction.
My post criticised Oxford Economics because their report ignored climate change: To keep to climate targets steep falls in carbon emissions are necessary. This is very unlikely to be possible with continued economic growth.
I heard the news today on BBC, ITV [1] and followed up online [2].
One interesting story concerned a report by Oxford Economics [3] about how every new industrial robot would destroy 2.2 jobs in poor areas and 1.3 jobs in wealthier areas. Apparently, this will be countered by the increased economic growth that these robots will bring.
However reports in the media did not mention the effects of economic growth on climate change so perhaps Oxford Economics should do some more research.
A start would be to look at the global yearly emissions of CO2 and also at the Keeling Curve showing increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere:
We must find new ways of living: New pleasant ways of living that do not destroy our planet..
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#6 Car-free cities are cheaper
n 1992, Carlo Ripa di Meana was the European Commission Environment Commissioner. He called for cities to be free of cars he said he was ready to become car-less, and so should other city dwellers, to prevent Europe’s cities being choked by the internal combustion engine.
He publicised a study he had commissioned showing that it would cost between 2 and 5 times less to live and work in car-free cities because of the savings people could make in not having cars to buy, park, insure and maintain.
Based on these observations, Carlo RIPA di MEANA, the European Environment Commissioner, has had a study carried out on car-free cities in an attempt to find the answer to the following question: Is it possible, and if so to what extent, to conceive of a city which will operate more efficiently than the type of cities we have at present, using alternative means of transport to the private car?
The answer provided by the study is positive, even in purely financial terms: the car-free city costs between two and five times less (the costs varying depending on the population density of the city).
This is a summary of a series of posts on housing from my site dontlooknow.org . When I have the energy and time I will rework these posts.
Personal remaining carbon budget: 64 tonnes CO2e
There is an important consideration that should be a precursor to this series: A representative remaining carbon budget. My judgement is that if humans emit more than 64 tonnes of greenhouse gasses each – measured as carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), horrid things will happen.
A few years ago I asked Andy Haldane, the Chief Economist at the Bank of England, what would happen if there were to be an increased supply of cheap housing. He kindly replied
If additional housing supply was to cause sharp declines in house prices, this might raise concerns about the adequacy of mortgage lenders’ capital positions and hence raise financial stability concerns. Some insurance against this risk is provided by banks’ own credit risk model calibrations and regulatory stress which consider severe levels of stress in the housing market, both of which are used to set banks’ level of capital.
We intend to conduct a further, housing market related stress test of UK banks later this year.
We must find new ways of living: New pleasant ways of living that do not destroy Planet A.
This requires a new form of town planning. Today’s town planning may be a starting point but a new, wider discipline is needed to make radical changes to the way we live. The idea was outlined in an earlier post, Enhanced Town Planning.
#1 A reference target for personal remaining carbon budget: 64 tonnes CO2e
A remaining carbon budget is the quantity of greenhouse gases that can be emitted before a global climate disaster occurs. This note estimates a reference budget: a quantity of emissions to be used as an indicator of the success or failure of the global climate policies.
If we keep within this budget, we are doing well: Exceed it and we are doing badly.
I believe that the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) is beginning to take climate change more seriously than hitherto. I look forward to your upcoming report.
I have welcomed the work of the committee in commissioning estimates of the UK’s carbon emissions on a consumption basis. This is the correct measure for evaluating climate policy.
Estimating carbon emissions on a territorial or production basis is misleading. This measure ignores emissions from shipping, aviation and imports. The claim that the UK is a ‘climate leader’ cannot honestly be made on the basis of production emissions: Shut a steel works and replace the steel with imports makes territorial emissions lower but will likely increases global emissions.
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