(Quick note - while this is slightly political, I’m trying not to make it about individual politicians or political parties. For the avoidance of doubt, all views are my own).
TLDR
Climate change is real, caused by humans, and this is bad.
The ULEZ (on balance) is good.
Political wrangling is making it harder to form a coherent strategy on the scale required to address climate change.
Short story long…
(views are my own!)
The climate is still changing and it’s still because of human activity
While it’s difficult to point at a specific event as evidence for a trend in something as massively complex as the earth’s climate, the current out of control wildfires do make for a dramatic and very visual representation of global warming.
A firefighter walks next to rising flames as a wildfire burns near the village of Vati, on the island of Rhodes, Greece, July 25, 2023. REUTERS/Nicolas Economou
The scientific consensus strongly supports the idea that human activities, especially the emission of greenhouse gases, are the primary drivers of modern climate change. You don’t need to take that statement at face value - there are heaps of studies and climate models that have all come to the same conclusion:
The IPCC
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is an authoritative international body that assesses scientific research related to climate change. Their assessment reports are based on extensive research conducted by thousands of scientists worldwide. These reports consistently show that human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, are the primary drivers of global warming and climate change. The latest IPCC reports and supporting information are available on their website.
The CMIP
The CMIP (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) is a collaborative effort among climate modeling centers worldwide to improve and compare climate models. The CMIP models have been used extensively to study climate change and its potential impacts. While CMIP models encompass a range of scenarios, the majority of them demonstrate that human activities significantly influence the observed climate change. The CMIP and their model data is accessible through the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) website.
NASA
NASA's Global Climate Change centre provide comprehensive information on climate change, including the role of human activities. NASA's scientists have contributed significantly to understanding climate change through satellite observations, data analysis, and climate modeling. On their website, you can find various articles, reports, and visualizations that support the conclusion that climate change is largely caused by human activities.
Point being, climate change is real and human made greenhouse gases are the cause.
Was the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election a referendum on the ULEZ?
So in the context of the planet being on fire, we come to the recent Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election results, where it’s been widely reported that the election became a referendum on the expansion of the ultra low emissions zone (ULEZ), which is an environmental policy of the current Elected Mayor of London.
This seems to have raised the idea that pushing back against action to tackle climate change is somehow a vote winner.
The assumption being that if the by-election was a referendum on ULEZ, then ULEZ lost. But did it?
In reality elections are messy and complicated- and while I’m sure some people were swayed by the ULEZ issue - most voters have multiple, often contradictory reasons to vote one way or another. Beware anyone offering single issues: it’s the economy complicated stupid.
Either way, the outcome from the election has been lots of political analysis and questioning about whether the public will vote for environmental initiatives like ULEZ. I’ve heard it positioned as: most people want to stop climate change but most people don’t want to accept any inconveniences to do so.
This is obviously nonsense and pretty insulting to the public.
The majority of people accept that climate change is happening. Most people are capable of understanding the concept. Most (two thirds in recent polling) people agree we need to take more action.
And I really don’t think people are so short sighted that they’re unprepared to be inconvenienced. I think we as a society- and especially our political leaders - have failed to articulate a coherent strategy that people can buy into.
A single consideration like ULEZ can be a hard sell in isolation. But ULEZ in the context of everything else would be palatable.
I’ve written before in support of the ULEZ and while it’s not perfect it is on balance a good initiative.
The ULEZ as part of the Mayor’s Transport Strategy
So in that context, I’d highly recommend reading the Mayors transport strategy.
(Note: I didn’t have anything to do with writing it but have been involved in helping to implement bits of it through my day job.)
I won’t comment on the strategy directly (aforementioned day job). However I don’t think it’s controversial to suggest that because it needs to be a political document as much as an actual practical strategy there some compromises in it that require interpretation.
I mean - That’s baked in. An elected mayor’s transport strategy is going to be linked to the elected mayor’s democratic mandate.
The Political and Strategic context of the ULEZ
The impact of the mayor’s transport strategy being political is that TfL’s funding is also political.
So in that context, we should consider the current settlement between the DfT and TfL, which intends for London to be the biggest city in the world without a public subsidy for its public transport network:
“…TfL will … fund day-to-day operations through our normal revenue sources…”
In my view this is quite a cynical political play by our government- to underfund London’s transport infrastructure, force the Mayor to raise local funding through things like the ULEZ, then attack the Mayor for implementing the ULEZ in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election. Presumably this will continue in the coming mayoral elections.
I guess the most charitable interpretation would be that the government genuinely feels that there isn’t enough money at a national level to fund regional transport, and that this should be funded by the users locally. If this is the case, it’s a pretty flawed concept. It’s well known that better public transport is better for the environment and better for the local economy encouraging investment and worker mobility. When we make it easier for people to get from where they live to where the jobs are and it’s easier for companies to find workers. Cars are inefficient and low capacity compared to buses and trains.
Let’s be clear, the conspiratorial styled reporting that the ULEZ is about TfL raising funds, is true. TfL have to raise revenue and the ULEZ is a way of generating revenue. There’s actually a pretty strong argument that, if funds have to be raised, then raising them from road vehicles is worth it to subsidise public transport which is more energy efficient, more economically efficient and better for the environment.
Again being clear, if the ULEZ is generating money then that does by design mean less money in the pockets of people. I find it disingenuous when arguments are made that X group won’t be impacted, or that it’s fair because of Y accommodation. Money is changing hands and that will have an economic impact. And while it is quite easy for someone driving a modern ULEZ compliant car to down play the effort of navigating the system to replace a noncompliant vehicle- it should not be forgotten that the people most likely to be driving a non compliant people are also the least likely to be able to navigate the system. I grinds my gears how quick people can be to judge others we know nothing about. There’s a whole other world that people live within right under our noses. Households of Multiple Occupation: literally multiple whole families living in houses originally built for one. People working multiple minimum wage jobs to put food on the table. These people are the most likely to be effected and most likely to struggle work out what to do about it. I digress…
Another huge problem with the ULEZ charges is that the charges aren’t being fully offset by discounts to more environmentally friendly alternatives.
Needing to be self funded, TfL are now making tough decisions about which services it can afford, and what services need to be reduced, how they can make the limited funding go further and how they can increase revenues.
Inevitably this means that TfL investment in environmental initiatives is going constrained. There are always financial constraints- however it would seem the current constraints on London are significantly harsher than any equivalent sized city in the western world.
Unhelpful Politics
For me, one thing that is very frustrating about all of this is the lack of coordination with national strategy or policy. Climate change is such a big of a threat to humanity, we need an aligned approach from national strategy through to local implementation. We don’t have time to be messing around here.
One of the most consistent arguments made by the engineering community is to separate short term politics from long term transport strategy. Given we’re staring down the barrel of climate change we need meaningful actual policy, objectives, strategies and plans.
The big challenge for London / south east will always be getting political organisations lined up.
An example of misalignment local to where I live
Consider the (now indefinitely postponed) metropolitan line Watford extension, which for a relatively modest investment would have significantly improved connectivity (more people closer to public transport options) and functional resilience (alternative journeys in case of closure of one of the lines). It would objectively be the best thing for the people of Watford and for the people of London.
Despite it mostly being funded by the public, the flow of money got mashed up within different authorities (National, County, Borough, London) who couldn’t get aligned on who should fund what and by how much.
The three main UK political parties were represented and when the project collapsed they all blamed each other.
It is easy to blame individual politicians for failing to prioritise the scheme - however each authority’s internal incentives ultimately caused them to make the decisions they did. The answer is to provide unifying incentives external to each authority, but aligned to a common strategy. Again - we need a coherent strategy to respond to climate change. We need leadership and vision.
One of the central ideas we’ve been pushing at The Centre for Asset Studies has been about alignment. One of our first papers we published discussed a proposed plan for northern infrastructure investment to create a single urban centre with sufficient economic gravity to rebalance the UK economy.
While that proposal is an interesting line of thought, a plan that grand would depend on a lot of people getting behind it. Big improvements are possible: there are countless feats of engineering that demonstrate this is the case. But for any of that to happen we need clear leadership and vision.
Thanks for reading
Appreciate this post was a bit longer than usual, and skated around some political issues.
If you enjoyed reading this one (or didn’t), please let me know. Always keen for feedback!
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