Former and hopefully future climate and poverty activist. Covid cautious. Autistic grey-ace/wtf-ro geek, software developer. Interested in green transition, green tech, activism, intersectionality, etc. I try to boost other marginalised voices while recognising my own privilege. Yorkshire, Remainer. Climate hawk on the pro-tech end: We need *appropriate* technology. Recently re-created this account after leaving for a while during an anxious period of unemployment.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • @PowerCrazy Because they have a bunch of things that they’re legally required to do and not enough money to do them all.

    Some of them are easier to downgrade, ration, or scrap, than others.

    Central funding was largely eliminated, while local government can no longer increase its own taxes beyond a certain threshold (requiring a referendum), thanks to laws passed by central government.

    So they have to cut something.

    Speed cameras save lives. It’s politically easier to get rid of the speed cameras than to get rid of the roads. Mostly because our cities remain car dependent, and even buses depend on roads. Local government cannot get rid of cars for free; that will take a sustained national effort with considerable funding and political will.

    Would you rather they cut the already very limited funding for helping old people who can’t afford their own care needs?

    Of course it’s a political decision. But the cuts, the restrictions on raising taxes, and turning speed cameras from something that saves lives, enforces the law, and generates revenue, into a cost, are all carefully calculated to restrict local government’s choices and blame them for the central government’s cuts.

    How can you be anti-car and still anti-speed-cameras?

    And yes, the rule that the national treasury keeps the fines did not apply to traffic wardens. Central government specifically set out to cripple one of the main tools for reducing road deaths, to make a populist political point.

    Though whether they make a profit on traffic wardens is less clear. A fair bit of enforcement is actually by the police, which is of course a different budget.










  • @sooper_dooper_roofer @mondoman712 Modern petrol cars contain lots of computers too.

    Automatic enforcement, with the right to override it recorded in the black box to be used as evidence in crash cases, is a perfectly reasonable idea. But inevitably there will be bugs, just as there are in self-driving cars (especially the often dangerous “semi-autonomous” vehicles).

    However there is a cheaper solution: Fixed, widespread speed cameras. Which right now are effectively banned in the UK, because the treasury confiscates the fines (local government pays the running costs, and therefore can’t afford to run any).

    While I understand there are usability issues, and design can help with that, if you’re not able to drive your ton of metal safely and legally you shouldn’t be driving it. If people expected to get caught, they’d drive slower.

    The bottom line is speed limits are the law. And lower speed limits reduce the number of serious injuries dramatically and help to push people onto public transport. Although with old cars they increase emissions slightly; with modern hybrids they reduce them.



  • @mr_washee_washee Either way, the technologies already exist and need to be deployed rapidly.

    The alternative is burning more fossil fuels.

    Which is both more expensive and *vastly* more dangerous. We need rapid progress towards sustainability, because it’s the *total* carbon emitted that matters.

    Emissions must peak by 2025 at the latest (in fact they must peak as soon as possible). The UK, for instance, has agreed to reduce its emissions by 68% by 2030 (compared to 1990), a target that it will almost certainly miss according to the last CCC report.



  • @mr_washee_washee How do you propose to balance the grid without wind?

    Solar panels are indeed mostly silicon, but they’re not entirely made of silicon. They also use “minor metals” (indium, gallium etc) in smaller quantities. They certainly use copper, steel and aluminium.

    The inverter for a solar panel might contain rare earths. The big ones for long range HVDC interconnectors very likely do.

    Whatever we build will involve some amount of mining.

    However given the enormous cost of the status quo, renewables are a step forward.