Just to be clear I wasn’t being feacious genuinely curious as to the specifics as I’m not as familiar with haulage.

I suspect there is an argument that we’ve made cargo transport too cheap and its skewed the economics of local vs outsourced production.

My preference would be pantograph systems on the motorways and main routes which we could roll out quite quickly and remove the majority of emissions coupled with a systemic look at our material needs and production capacities locally with a view to lowering volumes

The Silvertown tunnel (and lower thames crossing) in London would be a good example where we are rebuilding our infrastructure along the lines of sustained and increased haulage along certain routes at great public expense so I guess this could be considered an indirect subsidy.

What subsidies do they get?

I acknowledged this in my last paragraph. We should care about value though and we need to fight for that value to be something positive and meaningful (human and non-human health and wellbeing is a good start imo) not just shareholders.

Ultimately, there is a lot flawed in carbon accounting systems but we do need measures that allow us to assess if individuals, organisations and nations are doing enough and importantly articulate what pathways to zero emissions look like and that does mean trying to work out which processes are producing something we want with low or no emissions or not.

Sorry for delay I wanted to take the time to respond to you properly because I’ve probably thought similar to you at some point in my life and I want to explain how understanding what is happening has shifted that.

Yes, you are right the analogy isn’t perfect. Loss is part of change and change is a permenant. You are right that species and human history and culture has gone through both action and inaction from humans. My comment was about my own realisation that I (and probably wider society) was guilty of placing reverance and value too much on the human artifacts and not on the incredible natural history (the web of life that we all rely on) that we are losing. I looked at my feelings of potential loss about Van Gogh and questioned why I didn’t feel that way about our natural history and living beings we are losing daily and could stop destroying if we wanted to. So, you are right that losing the links to our human past would be tragic and we should try and preserve it* but the same is as true if not more true of our natural history. We are not separate from the climate and ecological systems we’ve evolved and developed in and whilst we could survive without links to our human history being disconnected from our natural heritage causes a number or mental and physical harms (the science is only just really beginning to understand these connections) and ultimately we rely on (e.g. food and clean air).

What I would say is that I think what you articulate is climate denial here. I realise, unfortunately, its an emotive term and I mean this in the way denial is talked about with respect to grief (which is what climate change is about to be honest coping with loss). You say that things always come and go and will regardless of our level of action. Whilst that is a truism it misses an important understanding of what’s happening. We are not just losing a few species or ecosystems here we are actually drastically changing the ratio of the rate of which things come and go. I.e. we are massively upping the rate at which things go whilst also limiting the rate at which they can come. Even this is an understatement unfortunately because what we are actually doing is pulling so hard on so many strands of the web of the life (Earth’s natural living systems) that the web itself is at risk of coming apart. Earth’s living system as a whole is as far as we know intrinsically unique to the whole universe and if we don’t manage to stem this collapse all those intrinsically unique human artifacts will likely be lost or in the worst case there won’t be much life to reflect on it. Its worth once again reiterating that the risk they took to the rocks was mindblowingly low espcially relative to other risks.

On their strategy I agree this is where there is room to start having a discussion about Just Stop Oils actions but we can’t do that I don’t think unless we start with the acknowledgement that their assessment of the stakes is valid and correct and that if effective their action (and tbh action that took real non trivial risk with Stonehenge) would be overwhelming worth it.

For what its worth I do think their theory of change is flawed and their self-care of their activists is lacking but if their aim is solely to keep climate change on the agenda with more people pushing for change they are succeeding (people hate them whilst they think about climate change and spend time on the internet and in person discussing climate change and what should and shouldn’t be done). The flaw I think is that they believe in an idealised vision of democracy where change happens when enough ordinary people want it whereas the reality is that public pressure is only one component of change espciaily when an issue is as complex and “spinnable” as climate change.

This is already too long so I won’t go into it but I also don’t think this issue boils down to a game of political chicken with governments. One of the challenges is the climate change is so sprawling and complex it brings up challenges to across lots if different scales and disciplines. The solutions are fundamental to our human story not just small technocrat shifts. There is no area of human activity that isn’t upturned by climate change and that ibudes archeology and anthropology.

Finally, if you are interested in learning about where I and others are coming from and the scale of our problems and challenges I recommend the following books:

• The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent. This covers human history and we have created meaning and how it links with the environment and interconnects with the current issues we face
• Inflamed: deep medicine and he anatomy of injustice by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel. Whilst not directly about climate change it does talk about how interconnected our health is with natural systems and how failure of connection to them leads to amoung other thing inflammation and disease.
• The climate book by Greta Thunberg. I haven’t actually read this but I know a number of the experts involved in areas that overlap with mine and I trust them. It might be guilty of focussing on the technical aspects of the issues rather than the human stories I think are more important which is why place it lower.

• There’s a lot of discussion to be had about Stonehenge particularly and how its been prioritised to be “preserved” at the cost and neglect of the surrounding archaeology. It also sad that none of the discussion and worry about potential risk to it covered the fact that the government is pushing ahead with sacrificing the wider site to car culture ( big underground new road, believing in the myth that more lanes stop traffic rather than the opposite). If we truly cared about that era of British and global history we would doing a lot more than “preserving” a few rocks which the Victorian moved about and romanticised anyway.

The idea is GDP is a measure of activity. So using per GDP allows you to see the efficiency which you are producing “value”. That’s not a terrible idea in general but it accepts a very narrow definition of value.

GDP is a really flawed measure of how well a society is performing. I wonder what it would look like if we used Gross National Happiness or Total Quality Life Years. Could also think about ecosystem health or biodiversity as a valuable output of a country but that’s highly linked to CO2 emissions so wouldnt be meaningful.

Also worth saying whilst per capita is absolutely important as a measure for us to understand the performance of human economic systems the earth systems only respond to gross total emissions.

Lots of people seem to hate this and I do on some level get it. I’d be happy to talk about whether its a winning strategy or what alternatives there are (I’m not sure personally its the optimum form of activism)

What I would say is the evidence suggests:

• General public do seem to hate this stuff.
• There is a relatively little spill over from the organisation to the wider issue (as in people think these guys are idiots but don’t link to climate change or environmentalism more generally).
• It is evidenced to increase the saliance and perceived importance of climate change I.e. people hate them but spend more time thinking climate change is serious than before.

Lastly, what I would say is from my own visceral reaction to the Van Gogh painting: I felt a huge and sudden feeling of cultural loss. That something of our heritage was at risk and we may lose it and initially I was angry and sad but I realised that we are routinely doing this everyday with lost species. Heritage we haven’t even been able to document yet. All that is to say it maybe we have a discussion about what the best activism is and who we need to influence and how (I think we need to do better than just think we need everyone on side) but what we shouldn’t do is entertain for a moment that the scale of this action isn’t proportional and valid to what we face. We are hurtling towards a cliff edge and some people still have their foot on the accelerator. This is the equivalent of worrying about a vase in the boot. I want to save it too but at the moment we are endangering it more through business as usual than through some cornflour.

Ethernet over power devices are surprisingly good.

I also worry that the systemic vs individual argument is actually used by some as a distraction too. “No point me trying unless the whole system changes” particularly when the change might seem like it involves some level of sacrafice (which often isn’t as clear cut as it seems or is presented).

I wonder if its more about paralysing perfectionism rather individual vs system. “Can’t be zero emissions as an individual without structural change” so don’t do anything. Similarly on the other side “can’t overthrow the whole global system so no point doing anything”.

I really we wish we talked a lot more about the intermediates between I individual and systemic/national. There’s so many smaller organisations that individuals have more agency in changing and in turn have more agency in changing larger numbers of individuals and influencing more of the systemic level

I would argue you’ve actually articulated exactly why individual action inevitably leads to wider collective action. It take attempting to do the right thing on individual level for some people to see the systemic issues that are there (like the subsidies you mention).

Very cool!

I would add just a few points I think are relevant for the discussion. I think some buildings and areas might need to be actively targets for removal on the basis on a spatial plan that builds in “space for nature” by which I mean letting the land return as much as possible to some form of wilderness. We are sadly quite far down the process of completely shaping the land and its not clear that we will be able to get back but I suspect a serious and sustained attempt will be needed.

On the transport of the materials: nothing wrong with your choice of road vehicles salvaged and converted to a different fuel source but it’s also worth considering another solarpunk option. Building before the availability of combustion engines often used temporary, lightweight narrow gauge railways were laid for the duration of construction. This was also used during WW1 for logistics. Once finished the track can be moved onto the next area. I suspect the narrow gauge would limit the speed and weight of any uses but for this purpose I suspect that doesn’t strongly matter. I can’t find a good source on the internet about this that’s but I vagually recall a Tom Scott video which mentioned off hand that a monorail which is now a tourist attraction actually began life as a temporary railway for construction freight. Rail also could be used in conjunction with human power (a hand car) for workers to commute.

Keep up the good work!

Hi sorry for delay I wanted to read and absorb it before replying and my energy levels have been unpredictable.

There’s some cool and great stuff in here.

I got overwhelmed about airships trying to work out if they were viable. You can (as I’m sure you’ve found) find a lot of aeronautical industry talking about how they fundamentally are unlikely to be able to fill any niche for some of the reasons you mention and some technical details which I really struggle to understand. Obviously industry spokespeople who are heavily invested in jet engines are unlikely to give a balanced picture…

I’m skeptical about wood burning vehicles to be honest. I think its more likely we will see (electric) micro mobility plus public transport. There could still be a niche for it but I suspect we would struggle to dedicate much land for wood production for this purpose given all the other demands we have.

I particularly like your focus on industry which often gets shuffled into a difficult-to-handle category and sort of forgotten. I wonder how much concrete demand we can avoid altogether.

Have you heard of solar.lowtechmagazine.com or its companion notechmagazine.com. They are full of this sort of thinking. Also there’s http://www.oldandinteresting.com/default.aspx lots of examples that might inspire!

Lots of discussion on the technology and the pros and cons and likely implications which is super interesting but also think it should be noted how cool taking a concept like this and making some art out of it.

Really nice way of showing other worlds are possible using a technology thread that got closed by the take off of fossil fuels. I think a lot of the future solutions will look like this.

Kudos!

I do understand the sentiment but I would urge that we need all the voices of discontent towards the current system to be united if we even stand a chance at the change we need on the timelines necessary.

I agree that solidarity and good faith dialogue needs to be two way and it can be difficult at times but we must keep striving to find a way of working with those voices.

Also, should go without saying but you shouldn’t judge a person by their fans (or really a subset of them). Lots in Marx has relevance and resonance to the problems we face. Solarpunk without class analysis will be subverted into techno-captialists vision for the future.

Worth mentioning that we need to be aware the degrowth in a degrowth scenario is a global average. Working classes could see growth (in living standards) whilst the whole economy shrunk.

On a lot issues people consistently say the they want the sort of changes (energy) degrowth would provide. We shouldn’t get lost in the current systems deliberate blurring of economic value and living standards.

See for example this work here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-018-0021-4

This is frustrating because its a strawman. A degrowth scenario could still have growth in some areas (and I would expect it to if it was part of a realignment on more equitable and sustainable principles) and the whole global experience degrowth.

At the core of this is the physical limits of energy sources (and therefore economic activity which is highly coupled and is likely to remain so). There is room for disagreement here but its down to whether or not one believes that tech will save us by providing a different high energy source in time (or a sufficient combination of energy sources and efficiency and decoupling options). On the timescales of Climate Change I’d say that’s highly unlikely and a period of degrowth will be necessary and the precautionary principle suggest we should work to this in case the tech options don’t work.

So you keep a project open in the Virtual Desktop and then boot it up when you are working on it?

No mention of the massively increased fuel requirements for supersonic flight and its climate implications…

We really can’t afford the aviations designs for massive growth of the sector.