We banned cigarette ads - now we should ban car ads, too

A ban on car advertising may seem far-fetched, but if you compare the automotive and the tobacco industries, the similarities may be closer than you think. Smoking and car use have comparable health costs, yet while we have the strictest tobacco promotion laws in the world, we allow car companies to promote themselves unbridled.

Britain recently estimated that they could save themselves
£1.6 billion in health costs if they copied the Dutch approach to cycling.

Smoking accounts for around 15,000 deaths and an estimated cost to the economy of $31.5 billion each year. Car accidents alone cost the economy an only slightly smaller $29.7 billion, but this does not include the significant health costs of air pollution and inactivity resulting from car use. Around 1300 people die and 32,000 are seriously injured in vehicle accidents each year. And while the vast majority of smoking-related deaths occur in those aged over 65, road trauma destroys young lives. It is the leading cause of death for people aged 15 to 29. Even more damning, however, is the little-known fact that the premature deaths from the road toll may be dwarfed by those from vehicle emissions.

Read the comment by Arwen Birtch from The Age - “We banned cigarette ads - now we should ban car ads, too.”

Wind and solar power are disrupting electricity systems

Almost 150 years after photovoltaic cells and wind turbines were invented, they still generate only 7% of the world’s electricity. Yet something remarkable is happening. From being peripheral to the energy system just over a decade ago, they are now growing faster than any other energy source and their falling costs are making them competitive with fossil fuels. BP, an oil firm, expects renewables to account for half of the growth in global energy supply over the next 20 years. It is no longer far-fetched to think that the world is entering an era of clean, unlimited and cheap power. About time, too. 

There is a $20trn hitch, though. To get from here to there requires huge amounts of investment over the next few decades, to replace old smog-belching power plants and to upgrade the pylons and wires that bring electricity to consumers. Normally investors like putting their money into electricity because it offers reliable returns. Yet green energy has a dirty secret. The more it is deployed, the more it lowers the price of power from any source. That makes it hard to manage the transition to a carbon-free future, during which many generating technologies, clean and dirty, need to remain profitable if the lights are to stay on. Unless the market is fixed, subsidies to the industry will only grow.

Read the story on The Economist - “Wind and solar power are disrupting electricity systems.”

The Royal Society helps us understand geoenmgineering

Questions about geoengineering were answered with the advice that Britain’s Royal Society would be a good place to begin research.

Dr Jolene Cook, who spoke recently event presented by Australian-German Climate and Energy College in collaboration with the EU Centre on Shared Complex Challenges and who had studied geoengineering, said study done by the society and subsequent reports provided a good foundation for inquiry into the matter.

Dr Cook spoke at the Carlton Connect Initiative’s LAB-14, which is a part of the University of Melbourne, and explored the role of science in climate policy.

A search for the Royal Society and reports on investigations into geoengineering turned up the report: “Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty.”

In the forward to the 2009 report, the then President of the Royal Society,  Lord Rees of Ludlow OM, said:

The continuing rise in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, mainly caused by the burning of fossil fuels, is driving changes in the Earth’s climate. The long-term consequences will be exceedingly threatening, especially if nations continue ‘business as usual’ in the coming decades. Most nations now recognise the need to shift to low-carbon economy, and nothing should divert us from the main priority of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. But if such reductions achieve too little, too late, there will surely be pressure to consider a ‘plan B’—to seek ways to counteract the climatic effects of greenhouse gas emissions by ‘geoengineering’.

Many proposals for geoengineering have already been made—but the subject is bedevilled by much doubt and confusion. Some schemes are manifestly far-fetched; others are more credible, and are being investigated by reputable scientists; some are being promoted over-optimistically. In this report, the Royal Society aims to provide an authoritative and balanced assessment of the main geoengineering options. Far more detailed study would be needed before any method could even be seriously considered for deployment on the requisite international scale. Moreover, it is already clear than none offers a ‘silver bullet’, and that some options are far more problematic than others.

This report is therefore offered as a clarification of the scientific and technical aspects of geoengineering, and as a contribution to debates on climate policy. The Society is grateful to all the members of the Working Group, and especially to John Shepherd, its chairman. We also acknowledge the valuable inputs from the Council’s review group, and the expert support, throughout the exercise, of the Society’s Science Policy team.

Read the Royal Society’s 2009 report – “Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty.”