Some real napkin maths here but in order for HS2 to take 120 years to become carbon neutral, it would have to reduce road use by 0.08% and domestic air travel by 0.06%. If it reduced air and driving by just 5% it would be carbon neutral in 1-2 years. Time to make some policy. Image
One awesome example of policy that should be implemented as soon as HS2 is launched is the outright banning of any domestic flights that are served by high speed rail, like France. railjournal.com/passenger/high…
On the left, the most popular airports for domestic flights to London. On the right, the HS2 route. Looky at that they match. Ban 100% of _those_ domestic flights and HS2 would be carbon neutral in months. ImageImage
We don’t even need to wait for HS2. If it’s less than 3 hours by train just ban that flight. Subsidise the tickets a little instead of constantly subsidising flights. Huge emission saving immediately, then even more routes banned when HS2 opens.
Passenger kilometer CO2eq emissions are a pretty simple way to visualize how this all works. Image

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More from @philsturgeon

24 Mar
🌍 Now people in my mentions are saying that because slow trains haven’t stopped people flying domestically there’s no reason to build faster trains along the routes people commonly fly because they’re quicker than trains. 🙃 #whyHS2 Image
The fun part about this graphic is that it says domestic trains are 41g. Yeah that’s a fair average when so many are diesel (and can’t be electrified due to limitations of the surrounding environment) but HS2 advertises 8g/km. closer to Eurostar levels of emissions.
These same people are acting like trains are inherently making people drive more, because some people drive to a train.
Read 7 tweets
23 Mar
🌍 Got people in my mentions adamant we won’t need high-speed electric rail in the future because some of their office worker friends are working from home sometimes at the moment. I don’t even know where to start with that, the stupidity, or the privilege.
The idea HS2 is no longer required because a pandemic has some folks WFH is based on daft assumptions. These people think 30% of Brits will WFH two days a week post pandemic forever. Let's take that as a fact (it's not), and keep in mind 55% of rail journeys are commutes. Image
If, post-pandemic, 30% of commuters continue to WFH half the time, and those days are spread evenly, then at any given point there's 15% fewer commuters commuting. Seeing as commuting is only 55% of rail, that's a 8% drop in rail journeys. Right? Math? Check me?
Read 8 tweets
20 Mar
The new 4000 miles of road #RIS2 creates more CO2 than HS2. Cuts down more ancient woodland than HS2. Will never become carbon neutral. Will only increase traffic. And nobody seems to give a shit. Zero Twitter accounts shouting about it (unlike HS2). This stinks of deception.
Please ask yourself: if you believe that 400 miles of electric railway line won’t ever become carbon neutral, how will 4,000 miles of tarmac?

Remember, RIS2 cuts down more trees. Of the answer is electric cars... we’re at 5% and they’ll not be 100% until at least 2080.
Building more roads and more lanes creates an effect called “induced demand”. “Oh it’s easier to drive to work now, let’s do that.” You get more lanes, fixes things for a few months, then you get traffic. More lanes. More traffic. More lanes. More traffic wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-t…
Read 15 tweets
19 Mar
People are concerned about cutting down 30 hectares (ha) of ancient woodland for HS2. We have 308,000 ha of ancient woodland, so that’s 0.01%.

We need to reforest 30,000 ha/year. In 2019 the target was 5,000 ha and we only did 1,420 ha.

This is a bigger problem than 30 ha.
Some of these ancient woodlands are little scraps of trees. Here’s the total phase 1 & 2a list of what’s being cut down. 0.2ha is less than 1/5th of a football pitch

It’s not nothing, we shouldn’t remove woodland for no reason, but trains are a legit way to decarbonise transport
Are trains really all that? Yes. Carbon Brief wrote about how aggressive train expansion can improve transportation emissions and in the U.K. transportation is our biggest sector. Planes, cars, trucks, diesel trains, all need decarbonising / replacing. carbonbrief.org/eight-charts-s…
Read 13 tweets
7 Mar
Running something on “natural gas” doesn’t make it any better. Methane comes from fracking, is leaky as fuck, when it escapes is x30 times more potent than CO2, is still producing CO2 when it gets to be burned, and saying “yeah but banking uses electricity anyway” is not a retort
Setting mining up to run directly off of 100% renewables would be something, but those renewables would be better used decarbonising the grid: to power homes, hospitals, industry, and yeah banking, so there’s no valid excuse for this bullshit ever. This is a fossil fuel company.
Read 4 tweets
22 Feb
Jaded people bang on about Low Traffic Neighbourhoods being “for rich people to have more fancy outdoor seating” but they’re more so people of all ages and incomes can get around without being turned into marinara.
Owners of £50 bikes and £5,000 bikes all enjoy not sharing tarmac with speeding tanks semi-consciously piloted by someone half paying attention to their to-go coffee and half paying attention to some algorithm based nonsense GPS route running late for a super important meeting.
Sure it’s hilarious I spotted a driver tindering at the wheel as he side swiped me into a blackout, but waking up in an ambulance with a head injury, broken collar bone, and fuck knows how many broken ribs is something I’d rather we didn’t all have to go through on the commute.
Read 4 tweets

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