Climate change: Should you fly, drive or take the train? August 23, 2019      An economy-class return flight from London to New York emits an estimated 0.67 tonnes of CO2 per passenger, according to the calculator from the UN's civil aviation body, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). That's equivalent to 11% of the average annual emissions for someone in the UK or about the same as those caused by someone living in Ghana over a year. Aviation contributes about 2% of the world's global carbon emissions, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). It predicts passenger numbers will double to 8.2 billion in 2037.. And as other sectors of the economy become greener - with more wind turbines, for example - aviation's proportion of total emissions is set to rise. Emissions from different modes of transport can vary hugely, and it also depends where passengers sit and whether they are taking a long-haul flight or a shorter one.  For long haul flights, carbon emissions per passenger per kilometre travelled are about three times higher for business class and four times higher for first class, according to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). This is because there's more space per seat, so each person accounts for a larger amount of the whole plane's pollution. Taking off uses more fuel than cruising. For shorter flights, this accounts for a larger proportion of the journey. And it means lower emissions for direct flights than multi-leg trips. Also, newer planes can be more efficient and some airlines and routes are better at filling seats than others. One analysis found wide variation between per passenger emissions for different airlines.  How does travelling by train compare? Train virtually always comes out better than the plane, often by a lot. A journey from London to Madrid would emit 43kg (95lb) of CO2 per passenger by train, but 118kg by plane (or 265kg if the non-CO2 emissions are included), according to EcoPassengeowever, the margin between train and plane emissions varies, depending on several factors, including the type of train. For electric trains, the way the electricity they use is generated is used to calculate carbon emissions. Diesel trains' carbon emissions can be twice those of electric ones. Figures from the UK Rail Safety and Standards board show some diesel locomotives emit more than 90g of C02 per passenger per kilometre, compared with about 45g for an electric Intercity 225, for example.The source of the electricity can make a big difference if you compare a country such as France, where about 75% of electricity comes from nuclear power, with Poland, where about 80% of grid power is generated from coal.  How to reduce your carbon footprint when you fly and one has to be very careful what sites are used for this calculation!                    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566 

Poof! There Goes the Electric Car Dream. Sputtering EV promises, in 13 scenes. And the true road to surviving the climate crisis.  Andrew Nikiforuk 8 Dec 2023The Tyee   The electric car will not whisk us towards an ever growing yet greener future.If governments were truly serious about reducing emissions, I have argued, they would celebrate walking and subsidize bicycles instead of $70,000 vehicles for the rich. They would improve public transportation and make our cities walkable again. And, bottom line, they would help us imagine a livable economy that uses less energy from every source, not more. But this puts me at loggerheads with those who view every problem as an opportunity to conquer some part of the human realm with a complex technical solution. Our political elites serve this determinism because they can’t countenance any tampering with the ponzi scheme of economic growth. As a consequence civilization now pretends that extracting more and more metals to build heavier and larger vehicles whose electricity is largely powered by fossil fuels is somehow a measure of progress. The evidence paints a different picture. CO2 emissions are rising and EV sales are stalling. It is becoming more obvious that the purveyors of battery-operated vehicles promised more than they could deliver. They did not account for unintended consequences and ignored serious environmental problems. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that electric cars really aren’t about lowering emissions but furthering artificial intelligence and automation. So here are 13 brief scenes documenting the unexpected performance of the ballyhooed electric vehicle. They illustrate, once again, that technologies not only create more complexity but usually generate more problems than they solve. Scene 1: Dwarfed by the crisis.....Battery operated vehicles now occupy about two per cent of the car market. Passenger cars represent about eight per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Even if civilization succeeds in replacing 1.4 billion passenger vehicles with battery operated ones, the impact will hardly put a dent in the scale of the problem. Art Berman, a Houston-based energy analyst, wryly observes, “People should buy EVs if they like them but not because they will save the planet from climate change.” Scene 2: The mining world.....Battery operated vehicles are totally dependent on the mining of critical and rare minerals. One EV needs six times more minerals than a conventional vehicle and as a result weighs on average 340 kilograms more. Lithium helps the battery charge quickly. Cobalt enhances its performance. Nickel improves energy density. Rare earth minerals such as neodymium and dysprosium make permanent magnets to run the electric motor. An EV can also contain more than a mile of copper wiring. In 2021 alone EVs and their batteries put an additional84,600 tonnes of nickel on the road — a nearly 60 per cent increase since 2020. A clean tailpipe doesn’t mean a clean car. The energy ecologist Vaclav Smil hasdocumented that an EV with a lithium car battery weighing about 450 kilograms contains a wealth of minerals that “requires processing about 40 tons of ores, and given the low concentration of many elements in their ores it necessitates extracting and processing about 225 tons of raw material. Scene 3: Ontario’s Ring of Fire.......EVs’ “green” appetite for minerals explains why governments and industry are eager to exploit $67-billion worth of copper, cobalt, nickel and chromite lying under the James Bay lowlands in a place geologists call the Ring of Fire.  The region sequesters more carbon on a per-square-metre basis than the Amazon’s rainforest. The scale of the destruction would be on par with the tar sands.  Scene 4: Norway.....read on, there's ten more        https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2023/12/08/Electric-Vehicle-Dream-Sputters-True-Climate-Crisis-Survival/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=111223    

 One solution to fight climate change? Fewer parking spaces. Less parking could pave the way for denser housing and more accessible public transportation. In the beginning, parking lots were created to curb chaos on the road. But climate change has turned that dynamic on its head. Since the 1920s a little-known policy called parking minimums has shaped a large facet of American life. In major cities, this meant that any type of building — apartments, banks, or shopping malls — needed to reserve a certain amount of parking spaces to accommodate anyone who might visit.  But transportation makes up almost one-third of carbon emissions in the U.S. and cars represent a significant portion of those emissions. As the country attempts to aggressively cut carbon emissions, reducing dependence on fossil fuels will also mean rethinking what transportation and public space look like, especially in cities. Earlier this month, the city of Austin, Texas, became the latest community to eliminate parking minimums and is now the largest city in the U.S. to do so. “Climate change is here,” said Qadri. “And we’re only going to make it worse by clinging to these very climate unfriendly and unsustainable transportation habits of the 20th century.” The elimination of this seemingly innocuous law could pave the way for cities to build denser housing, increase public transit options, and reduce their carbon emissions, according to Donald Shoup, an engineer and professor of urban planning at UCLA.  “It isn’t just the housing crisis and climate change, it’s traffic congestion, it’s local air pollution, it’s the high price of everything — except parking,” said Shoup.  Climate change and air pollution are particularly costly outcomes, with both estimated to cost the U.S. billions of dollars every year. Parking spots, meanwhile, can run in the tens of thousands of dollars to construct, with one estimate putting that figure at almost $30,000 per spot. “Even if climate change were not an issue, removing parking requirements is a good idea. But in addition to being a good idea locally, it will help the entire planet,” he said. Momentum is building with cities like Anchorage, Richmond, and Raleigh, and states like California all eliminating their parking minimums within the last few years.  Paved parking lots not only take up valuable space, but also contribute to the urban heat island effect, where cities often experience higher temperatures than their rural counterparts. The asphalt and concrete used to construct parking lots often absorb and re-emit heat at higher rates than the natural environment. This happened amidst a record-breakingly hot summer which means that not only are parking lots contributing to the larger problem of climate change, but they also make the outcome worse in the short-term as well.      https://grist.org/climate/one-solution-to-fight-climate-change-fewer-parking-spaces/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=weekly   

The logistics sector serves as a crucial catalyst for economic activity, fulfilling the requirements of businesses and consumers globally. The sector is projected to undergo exponential growth in this decade, from US$8.9 trillion in 2023 to US$18.2 trillion by 2030. While the logistics sector is essential for trade and supply chains, it’s also a major source of carbon emissions and air pollution. The sector is responsible for a tenth of global emissions, underscoring the need for adopting sustainable strategies to reduce emissions. This urgency is particularly pronounced within the Group of Twenty (G20), which consists of the EU and 19 individual countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the UK, and the United States). Collectively, the G20 nations are home to two-thirds of the world’s population and account for 85 percent of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The G20 nations are also responsible for nearly 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, a significant portion of which comes from the logistics sector. The Green Logistics Playbook provides an actionable toolkit for G20 leaders, offering concrete solutions and successful case studies on sustainable logistics practices across G20 nations that can address climate change, enhance livelihoods, improve public health, and foster economic growth. The solutions presented in the report are divided across four key strategies:  

• Logistics operations: Driving robust innovation, research and development, and on-the-ground deployment of sustainable logistics measures.
• Policy drivers: Incentivizing the adoption of efficient logistics practices and conveying potent market signals to prioritize sustainability within the sector.
• Infrastructure development: Strategically planning and deploying a network of physical facilities for storing and transporting goods.
• Financial investments: Facilitating public–private partnerships to mobilize finance for infrastructure and projects geared toward sustainability.              DOWNLOAD THE REPORT BELOW 

The report outlines system-level changes that the G20, as a global collaborative forum, can achieve by partnering with the participating nations.                        https://rmi.org/insight/the-green-logistics-playbook/#:~:text=The%20logistics%20sector%20serves%20as,US%2418.2%20trillion%20by%202030.