Oil trolls terrified of #freepublictransport #freetransit

Cities are turning to fare-free public transit to fight pollution. Capitalists are panicked. What if it catches on? In Paris they managed to stop it. But in Korea, they are having trouble. They dug out this old canard about free buses reducing walking.

Can Free Public Transit Fix South Korea's Smog Problem? - The Atlantic: "The lure of “free,” the report implied, attracted the “wrong” crowd—the “right” crowd, of course, being wealthier people with cars, who aren’t very sensitive to price changes … Free subway rides entice people who would otherwise walk, not people who would otherwise drive."

Studies consistently show that this is false. That public transit users actually walk more.

Former RIPTA board member calls for #freetransit for Rhode Island

Fare-Free New England: "There would be no need to print, market, and distribute transfers and passes. It would speed up trips by speeding up boarding, thus both using buses and drivers more efficiently, and attracting more riders. It can truly put Rhode Island on the map and get the attention of potential progressive employers attracted by the idea of the one statewide free transit system."

Study calls sprawl called wasteful

New Climate Economy: "High levels of sprawl create economic inefficiency and dependence on motor vehicles, leading to higher carbon emissions."

Hopkins mayoral candidate says light rail would bring 'trash from Minneapolis'

KMSP : ""All the Chicago and Detroit riff raff who have moved into 'Welfare-apolis', they are going to get on that train and you know where they are going to end up - at The Depot with yours and yours and yours' granddaughters and grandsons," Ivers said during the forum."

Reasons for #publictransit. Fight racism.

Polish City of Krakow Offers Again Free Public Transport to Fight Pollution

Latin American Herald Tribune: "
WARSAW – The Polish city of Krakow, where high levels of air pollution have been reached in recent winters, offered on Tuesday free public transport to travelers in a bid to reduce the use of private vehicles, local authorities said on Radio Poland.

The city’s government also called on residents to go outdoors as little as possible due to high pollution levels.

Poland has 33 of the 50 most polluted cities in Europe, with worryingly high levels of airborne particles, according to a report by the World Health Organization published in 2017."

An excellent resource about freedom from cars

Carfree Times: September 2017: ""If given just one word to describe climate change, then 'unfairness' would be a good candidate. Raised levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are expected to cause deadly heatwaves for much of South Asia. Yet many of those living there will have contributed little to climate change.""

Imagine there's no cars

http://www.carfree.com/

Seoul offers free public transport to tackle excessive air pollution

The Independent : "Emergency measures have been introduced in the South Korean capital of Seoul to combat a thick layer of smog that is covering the city.

Public transport is free during rush-hour as of Monday 15 January, in the hopes that car use will be reduced.

The measures were introduced after the average daily density of ultra-fine dust hit more than 50 micrograms per cubic metre, an amount that is considered harmful."

Less than 10 years to human extinction, from mostly peer-reviewed submissions

Climate-Change Summary and Update – Nature Bats Last: "If you’re too busy to read the evidence presented below, here’s the bottom line: On a planet 4 C hotter than baseline, all we can prepare for is human extinction (from Oliver Tickell’s 2008 synthesis in the Guardian). Tickell is taking a conservative approach, considering humans have not been present at 3.3 C or more above baseline (i.e., the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, commonly accepted as 1750). I cannot imagine a scenario involving a rapid rise in global-average temperature and also retention of habitat for humans."

Green-energy hoax exposed

#freetransit #freepublictransport - An international campaign

Europe

Here is how #renewables make things worse

Assume today all fossil-fuel use ended. The following heat and emission generators still exist.

Direct

• human activity - moving, building, fixing, fighting, maintaining body temperature

Indirect

• drying peat
• melting permafrost
• melting clathrates (ocean methane)
• soil emissions from agriculture
• forest destruction reducing co2 capture
• wildfires
• reduced ice melt latency
• reduced ice solar reflection
• tectonic activity from ice melt
• tectonic activity from geothermal energy use
• etc

All of these are doubling every 30 18 years.

Renewables do abolutely nothing to slow growth. Even without fossil-fuel we will cook the bioshere. Only degrowth reduces both heat and emissions.

Reducing emissions is ambiguous

Let's leave aside the second derivative, the rate of growth of the rate of growth, or acceleration of emission growth.

The rate of growth, even if it were a steady percent, is still exponential. If emissions grow, for example, 2.3 percent per year, then the amount of carbon in the atmosphere will double every 30 years.

Let's say that emissions are brought to zero. The amount of carbon already emitted is still not being reduced. It stays the same. This is the state which China aspires to reach in 12 years. That means they plan to continue adding carbon until that time.

Many technofixers are saying X reduces carbon emissions. But people read it as X reduces carbon. This needs to be made clear.

Unfolding Arctic Catastrophe

Arctic News: "Warm water will melt the sea ice from below, which keeps the water at greater depth cool. However, when there is little or no sea ice underneath the surface, little or no heat will be absorbed by the process of melting and the heat instead stays in the water, with the danger that it will reach sediments at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, as illustrated by the image below."