Simply put, the unfortunate reality is that the goals of “Limit carbon emissions” and “Be nice to trees and don’t build anything” are mutually incompatible.
Sorry to come back to this so many months after it was published, but I've just realised something.
They aren't fundamentally incompatible; there is a third alternative: "become a lot poorer".
If we abolished cars and don't enhance public transport, then people just can't travel as much. If agriculture can't use tractors or fertiliser or pesticides, then it will need far more people, which is good because that will give all the people who can't commute to their jobs any more something to do - move to a village and start working on the farms.
If we get rid of fossil fuel power and we don't cover land with solar panels or wind farms, then we just have less electricity. Which means we are much poorer.
There are definitely a fraction of people within the Green movement (green haters tend to call them "crusties") who have very little carbon emissions but get there by just being poor and giving up many of the amenities of modern society and using a lot less energy.
I don't think we can understand how they come to believe what they believe without an appreciation of both the left-coded ("crusties") and right-coded (old-style conservationists; the sort of person with an AGA and no central heating) versions of this viewpoint.
Your argument is based on the premise that HS2 is a reasonably efficient way to achieve any of its stated aims.
On every one it is a terrible answer to the essay question.
Get people out of cars? The proportion of journeys made by rail is tiny, the number on long distance rail, a tiny sliver of that tiny number. Most of the people using trains are higher earners. HS2 is basically regressive and does nothing for social mobility and its impact on modal shift is at best a rounding error.
Get people out of planes? Domestic is c.4% of UK aviation emisssions (and HS2 is being promoted as essential by two major airports to help them expand the far more polluting international routes).
Close the North/South divide? No high speed rail system anywhere has lifted an entire economic region and there is abundant evidence to shows it tends to have the opposite effect.
Capacity? Well, HS2 say most of its passengers would be leisure travellers (who avoid peak times and contribute little to the development of high skilled jobs) and if there is a capacity issue (but the DfT data shows that's not really the case) it's in peak services, but around 40% of peak services into cities like Leeds or Manchester are 2 or 3 coach trains. A new line between a handful of English cities isn't required to solve that problem. Even Lord Oakervee whose report was used by the Government to proceed with construction complained that even now there is no strategy or detail for this great benefit of "released capacity". 10 years and billions spent and it's all just a hunch.
Move more freight by rail? HS2 say it could produce "up to" 10 new freight paths each way between London and B/ham. One new freight train every couple of hours isn't going to have a measurable impact on road traffic on the M6/M1.
Just what is the point, what would HS2 do well?
All of this inefficiency/pointlessness comes at significant environmental and financial cost. On the "scarce resources" argument alone, the Green Party are spot on and the Greens4HS2 group, which has at least some of its material written by someone who works for a contractor for HS2 and seemingly has no transport or rail expertise within those who put their name to it can be dismissed as a naive bunch who don't seem to have really understood the arguments and produce "could be, might be" arguments for HS2 which depend for their success on a lot of policies which don't exist in anyone's pipeline and which don't need HS2 to be implemented any way.
Re: 'the unfortunate reality is that the goals of “Limit carbon emissions” and “Be nice to trees and don’t build anything” are mutually incompatible"'...
Much as I agree that we need to be pragmatic, I am not sure we can ignore the consequences of loss of habitat as if nature were just a "nice to have" rather than an "essential". Of course, much stuff will have to be built. But as well as a climate change crisis, we do have a massive biodiversity crisis and we know that a big part of the problem is the fragmentation of different habits into unsustainably small islands (see Rebirding by Benedict McDonald for a great discussion of this).
I don't know how to weigh the badness of the consequences of massive species loss against the badness of the consequences of climate change (especially since both affect each other), or who to trust to make the best trade-offs, but I think we need to try to have a strategy that does not ignore the former completely.
Digs at the Green Party leader aside for changing her position, you don't make a convincing case for HS2.
Currently, it costs £300 for a single individual to travel by rail from one end of England to the other, so it's cheaper to travel by road. HS2 won't be bringing that price down any time soon. And with everyone's bills dramatically increasing due to being forced to used costlier electricity for power, installation of expensive heat pumps and purchase of even more expensive EVs, households won't have a surplus to spend on HS2 rail, so it might well be less solvent than the current rail network. Which then begs the question, is the environmental damage worth the actual achieved benefits?
Simply put, the unfortunate reality is that the goals of “Limit carbon emissions” and “Be nice to trees and don’t build anything” are mutually incompatible.
Sorry to come back to this so many months after it was published, but I've just realised something.
They aren't fundamentally incompatible; there is a third alternative: "become a lot poorer".
If we abolished cars and don't enhance public transport, then people just can't travel as much. If agriculture can't use tractors or fertiliser or pesticides, then it will need far more people, which is good because that will give all the people who can't commute to their jobs any more something to do - move to a village and start working on the farms.
If we get rid of fossil fuel power and we don't cover land with solar panels or wind farms, then we just have less electricity. Which means we are much poorer.
There are definitely a fraction of people within the Green movement (green haters tend to call them "crusties") who have very little carbon emissions but get there by just being poor and giving up many of the amenities of modern society and using a lot less energy.
I don't think we can understand how they come to believe what they believe without an appreciation of both the left-coded ("crusties") and right-coded (old-style conservationists; the sort of person with an AGA and no central heating) versions of this viewpoint.
It’s not just HS2. When it comes to genetically modified crops or nuclear power, the greens persist with irrational policies.
Degrowth is ultimately a racist and anti-humanist policy.
Thank you James for typing what many others have privately (and not so privately) thought.
Your argument is based on the premise that HS2 is a reasonably efficient way to achieve any of its stated aims.
On every one it is a terrible answer to the essay question.
Get people out of cars? The proportion of journeys made by rail is tiny, the number on long distance rail, a tiny sliver of that tiny number. Most of the people using trains are higher earners. HS2 is basically regressive and does nothing for social mobility and its impact on modal shift is at best a rounding error.
Get people out of planes? Domestic is c.4% of UK aviation emisssions (and HS2 is being promoted as essential by two major airports to help them expand the far more polluting international routes).
Close the North/South divide? No high speed rail system anywhere has lifted an entire economic region and there is abundant evidence to shows it tends to have the opposite effect.
Capacity? Well, HS2 say most of its passengers would be leisure travellers (who avoid peak times and contribute little to the development of high skilled jobs) and if there is a capacity issue (but the DfT data shows that's not really the case) it's in peak services, but around 40% of peak services into cities like Leeds or Manchester are 2 or 3 coach trains. A new line between a handful of English cities isn't required to solve that problem. Even Lord Oakervee whose report was used by the Government to proceed with construction complained that even now there is no strategy or detail for this great benefit of "released capacity". 10 years and billions spent and it's all just a hunch.
Move more freight by rail? HS2 say it could produce "up to" 10 new freight paths each way between London and B/ham. One new freight train every couple of hours isn't going to have a measurable impact on road traffic on the M6/M1.
Just what is the point, what would HS2 do well?
All of this inefficiency/pointlessness comes at significant environmental and financial cost. On the "scarce resources" argument alone, the Green Party are spot on and the Greens4HS2 group, which has at least some of its material written by someone who works for a contractor for HS2 and seemingly has no transport or rail expertise within those who put their name to it can be dismissed as a naive bunch who don't seem to have really understood the arguments and produce "could be, might be" arguments for HS2 which depend for their success on a lot of policies which don't exist in anyone's pipeline and which don't need HS2 to be implemented any way.
Re: 'the unfortunate reality is that the goals of “Limit carbon emissions” and “Be nice to trees and don’t build anything” are mutually incompatible"'...
Much as I agree that we need to be pragmatic, I am not sure we can ignore the consequences of loss of habitat as if nature were just a "nice to have" rather than an "essential". Of course, much stuff will have to be built. But as well as a climate change crisis, we do have a massive biodiversity crisis and we know that a big part of the problem is the fragmentation of different habits into unsustainably small islands (see Rebirding by Benedict McDonald for a great discussion of this).
I don't know how to weigh the badness of the consequences of massive species loss against the badness of the consequences of climate change (especially since both affect each other), or who to trust to make the best trade-offs, but I think we need to try to have a strategy that does not ignore the former completely.
I wouldn't call Tom Chivers' article a "superb evisceration".
No, I'd call *this* a "superb evisceration":
https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1426177142849773570?s=20&t=GpCRsI2QHR5z5eQbPkNXUQ
Digs at the Green Party leader aside for changing her position, you don't make a convincing case for HS2.
Currently, it costs £300 for a single individual to travel by rail from one end of England to the other, so it's cheaper to travel by road. HS2 won't be bringing that price down any time soon. And with everyone's bills dramatically increasing due to being forced to used costlier electricity for power, installation of expensive heat pumps and purchase of even more expensive EVs, households won't have a surplus to spend on HS2 rail, so it might well be less solvent than the current rail network. Which then begs the question, is the environmental damage worth the actual achieved benefits?
If it's about funding, the forthcoming WW3 will be a higher priority than climate change...