HS2 - I Have a Better Idea (From Bucks Free Press)
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HS2 - I Have a Better Idea
9:50pm Thursday 10th March 2011
Oh the HS2 debacle! The issue doesn't effect me and neither I, nor the Transition Town, have any strong views on the matter. But what did interest me was how it made the Green Party squirm. Various Green Party members have been online to tell us why The Green Party is also against HS2.
How things have changed. Only a year ago they didn't have a seat in Parliament. Now they have one. God bless her; Caroline Lucas snatched Brighton Pavilion from Labour in last May's election. Now if you thought that the Lib-Dems were having a hard time in power consider the plight of the Green Party. I am sure only a year ago they would have been all over HS2 advising us of its wisdom.
What a difference a year makes. Now they realise that the reality of HS2 is the tearing up of middle England. Fancy that. Putting railway tracks through the Chilterns. There are steam choo-choos there already but somehow we are happy with old Thomas the Tank. Suddenly the very idea of building HS2 is fought out along environmental battle-lines. It seems we are in the United Kingdom of Amnesia. Only a brief time ago the Conservatives were applauded for scrapping Heathrow expansion and investing in rail. How it has come back to haunt them. If there was ever a time to watch politicians squirm it is this time. As funny as it may be this is serious business and a bad precedent may be about to be set.
Consider this: replace the word "HS2" with "Wind Turbines". Replace "Heathrow expansion" with "Coal-fired power station expansion" and see what you get. This is history running backwards. Just at the very time that we need to decarbonise our economy we are back-peddling on the principles. We can no longer outsource the problems of energy generation and long-distance travel to some isolated spot on the map. If we are to be low-carbon and more resilient then there will have to be lots of alternatives, spread out, at ground-level.
Now, suddenly we realise what a crowded little island we live on and just how difficult this will all be. The political get-out-of-jail card is the classic excuse EVERYONE uses and it is this: "yes we are all for HS2 but not THIS HS2". Suddenly we realise that the decarbonisation of our community isn't the realisation of some environmentalists dream. No. It involves hard work and concrete. I predict some bitter battles between environmentalists and people like me in future. England is not some fantasy museum-shop version of Camelot. Lots of things may actually have to change and a lot of Greens are NOT going to like this. The post-carbon future is not a utopia of wild flowers and dancing around the May Pole.
No doubt there are hundreds of environmentalists all over the Chilterns who are making HS2 an "environmental" issue so the Greens are backing off. The trouble is that if you DON'T invest in HS2 style infrastructure soon then there will be no Chilterns to protect. The green and pleasant little England we know today will be gone within 200 years. Our climate will be that of North Africa and we won't have trains. We'll have donkeys.
This perfectly illustrates the problem we face. However, Peter Taylor understands it. He understood it so well that he wrote a book called "Chill". Then there was Lawrence Solomon and his book "The Deniers". Both are well scripted Climate Skeptic books. Both authors claim to have stout environmental backgrounds. Taylor objects to wind turbines hence he tried to find evidence of an impending downward trend in global temperature. Solomon doesn't like Nuclear Power so he became interested in promoting climate skeptics. Both are traveling the path that the Greens find themselves on... Or do they?
If we don't buckle down and build the low-carbon economy then there will be NO economy to replace it. If not HS2 then WHAT? WHERE? We don't need NIMBYs. We need NIHABIs: "No I Have a Better Idea". To give the Green Party credit, at least Caroline has suggested that we build more localised rail networks around major city hubs instead of intercity rail links. That is indeed a better idea!
It may well be time to get out of this monotonous paradigm of high speed long distance travel. There is a better way. Relocalise. Whatever they have up North let's get it down here. Problem solved.
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Comments(11)
demoness
says...
7:11am Fri 11 Mar 11
Control immigration yes.But but what about everyone else?
KentP
says...
12:15pm Fri 11 Mar 11
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at the very least, provide financial incentives for the population to *not* breed like rabbits, rather than the reverse which seems to be true today
J B Blackett
says...
1:46pm Fri 11 Mar 11
demoness wrote:As things are, it is not sustainable. People can continue to have children but not in excess that is happening at this time. At the moment large families in this country (and elsewhere) are actually actively encouraged at the expense of the whole social , national and international structures.
JBB - how on earth would you suggest we cut down on people?
Control immigration yes.But but what about everyone else?
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Populations have to be kept at sustainable levels otherwise access to all the basic human requirements (food , energy , raw materials, shelter , employment etc ) will reduce dramatically Climate change, decimating all other species and ruining the Earth is all part of it too.
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And it will only need a political , natural disaster or epidemic to trigger things off. Life on this planet is and always has been balanced on a knife edge. We are all precariously perched on a very small world on the edge of a small galaxy.
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There is a finite limit to all resources spite of the short-sighted philosophies and self-interested policies of politicians , religions and other agencies with vested interests in retaining control over people by keeping most of them poor , in servitude and dependent .
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It is the excess people that causes and will continue to cause the social and infrastructural problems in all over-populated areas - in the Third World , Second and First World. It will all end in disaster for all of us.
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It is only the stupid weasel-words of the agencies aforementioned that are dragging the human race towards the abyss. Unfortunately these type of people are historically proven to be unfit to govern the Earth and its peoples.
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Until that changes, it is , I'm afraid a downward spiral which all the scientific and environmental advances will not cure or even slow down.
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Still looking on the bright side - it is nearly the week-end.
J B Blackett
says...
2:28pm Fri 11 Mar 11
MisterH
says...
3:14pm Fri 11 Mar 11
J B Blackett
says...
9:44pm Sun 13 Mar 11
MisterH
says...
12:52pm Mon 14 Mar 11
J B Blackett
says...
1:32pm Mon 14 Mar 11
MisterH wrote:You are assuming everything stabilizes to conditions as at present.
As I understand it, the HS2 is the alternative option to a third runway and more flights in and out of Heathrow. There must be some need to improve the mass-transit infrastructure or these two massive projects would not have been proposed. Is there a third option? Bigger motorways perhaps?
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That is the population will remain the same , unemployment will will remain the same , access , the availability of fossil fuels will remain the same , more people will need to travel further aat higher speeds , import resources will remain the same etc etc. The short-sighted politicians' point of view
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None of the above will happen the way predicted because this country is not self-sufficient in any way and it is over-populated.
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There is no simple straightforward answer , I'm afraid , to the problems created and continually made worse by our wonderful 'rulers , leaders and betters'.
lizzylouise
says...
11:26pm Sat 19 Mar 11
Windsorian
says...
11:14am Sat 26 Mar 11
What is of importance is the decarbonisation of the electric generation supply, whether it be coal with carbon capture and storage or nuclear, with windmills / solar panels running a poor 3rd because of their need for back up generation.
Most people would abhor the thought at this time of year to being restricted to locally sourced vegetables and fruit. Of course it is the same with travel where even people in rural areas want to visit other parts of the country or travel abroad.
Meanwhile Lizzy has been writing on the StopHS2 website, that she wants transport rationing like there was food rationing in WW2 !!
High speed rail is so not green or Green any more...
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The perfect wife and mother, Rebecca runs a home, a bad temper and is working on her novel. She enjoys photography, playing the piano and likes almost anything that's out of fashion and uncool. She lives in Amersham with her husband and youngest child (aged ten). Her eldest, now 27, lives and works in Buckinghamshire.
J B Blackett says...
12:18am Fri 11 Mar 11
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HS2 is only a minor contributory part of the whole picture. We must cut down on consumption and , if absolutely necessary , people. It is the only sustainable answer.
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The world is full of unstable regimes which supply the UK with food , fuel and raw materials ; we are too dependent on them. If they become more unstable, collapse or change allegiances we will be finished as a country. Thanks to our short-sighted politicians
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