“In 2002 in excess of 100,000 hectares of land lay fallow or was marginal land unfit for conventional crops. Tens of thousands of hectares was used for the cultivation of rape seed, using vast quantities of fertilisers and pesticides. The transportation and pollution caused by the processing of these pesticides and fertilisers carried a huge carbon footprint.

“Hemp can be grown on marginal land, and does not need pesticides and fertilisers. The farmer can eventually produce his own seeds for cultivation. Hemp would be a cash bonus crop for farmers locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. Meanwhile using in excess of 50% of the earth’s pesticides and fertilisers cotton remains the planet’s mono crop. Hemp could replace chemical sprayed,cancer causing, soil depleting, cotton with a better quality, longer lasting product, grown locally in our own bio-region, thus creating environmentally sustainable, permanent employment locally.”

Colin Preece helps run Lambread Ltd which sells hemp products

Articles in the Opinion section of this website reflect the views of each author, not necessarily of GreeninBrum

AND 4 TIMES FASTER THAN DEMOLITION/REBUILD

By applying Triso Super insulation etc (that came in from France some years ago and rapidly became popular in loft conversions because of its ease of use) in a new situation on walls externally to Victorian and other housing the thermal mass efficiency of “hard-to-treat” houses can be harnessed trapping solar gain or energy from heating – summer cool “space-age” insulation. This simultaneously solves draught or condensation problems.

The process is so simple it can be understood by schoolchildren so should be more effective than some other innovations. Bypassing long lead-in times that require extensive research and development would be a huge advantage in current economic conditions. In this document we invite those in key positions to see for themselves. We have already contacted the Building Research Establishment. By placing “space-age” insulation externally a material such as Triso Super 10 (which is a series of foil layers separated by foam) can then be fixed between cross-battens screwed to existing poor quality brickwork, render or stucco or indeed any situation not visually as important as front elevations which are part of the precious heritage of the UK. By applying the system to side and rear walls however, the added value becomes immediately obvious. We used 18 mm vertical boarding which is maintenance-free (as accepted abroad) but the perimeter must be carefully sealed against air leakage and proper flashings on the upside.

If the overall carbon leakage from existing buildings can be halved and a similar exercise achieved in hot situations requiring air conditioning, then energy stress and fuel price rises could be made a thing of the past with knock-on positive effects throughout the economy – gas prices could be reduced if consumption came down a lot. Rapid deployment of these as emergency measures could also prevent the global economy going further towards free-fall and provide employment in Building –a form of fast-track regeneration! (without excess consumption)

Balancing any tax rises needed to fund these and other measures is important so other attachments herewith describe two innovative proposals to enable an energy sustainability offset. These can help tax-neutrality, protecting the vulnerable using a banking adjustment that is urgently necessary to stabilise inflation caused by excessive rewards to the finance sector. This could give industry a solid foundation for the future – see CMBA Treasury.

Althought the cost of these measures could be as low as £20 per sq metre DIY, for the general public scaffolding and professional expertise will require £100.00 per sq m say £10,000.00 for an average “semi” house. As this is beyond the savings power of many people we have suggested that with unity by the whole community (preferably global) government could pull us out of recession by adjusting credit money flow and make a just return to the producer nations by an Environmental Tax to reduce emissions on both sides of the world – a Contraction and Convergence mechanism.

Ian Greenwood is a structural engineer based in Moseley. Website: steerglobal.org

Summarising: The new need is at least an urgent incentive towards energy-enveloping of “hard to treat” buildings i.e. preventing heat leakage, but also useful in promoting natural air conditioning (overnight cooling) both in the UK and in many parts of the world. Utilising the thermal mass of existing buildings and a new mechanism to allow those increases in funding would be relatively simple and could offer a way out of Stagflation as well as a way to stabilise energy prices. An offset can be provided from the free money currently enjoyed by banks, building stability for industry and finance.

The city cannot be considered in isolation from its surrounding countryside. I remember 40-30 years ago there were loads of very ancient farms and orchards, now all replaced by commuterland and the farmers dead. And in Bham there were loads of productive factories now replaced by offices and apartments. I always thought these changes could not make sense and I think that even more now.

I am very sceptical of whether a city of a million is an even remotely viable concept in an age of declining oil supply (and consequent crash of food supply too). In the previous century it at least had all that infrastructure of agri and industry which it has lost and will be very hard to rebuild to scale. But now there is the further complication that fuel to grow food and transport it into the city will become unaffordable/unavailable, at the same time as the approach of an unprecedented catastrophe of the global financial system (www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse) .

I therefore incline to think that the only realistic way forward is either an urgent policy of massive de-urbanisation, re-skilling, etc, or failing that, preparing to get the hell out of here while we still can.

II’m far from persuaded there is a significant shift [in the media, politics
and industry] beyond public-relations cosy words. In Birmingham we
have in the last year had the BMI Beach, and continued plans for airport
expansion and for building even more thousands of “luxury” apartments
remote from sources of food production. They’ve recently approved a big
Asda on the Bristol Rd. I’m not aware of any meaningful city council
vision of reducing motorised traffic, let alone actually doing it.
Which major roads have they closed or degraded?

Meanwhile the central government continue to undermine localisation by
closing post offices and local surgeries. And Gordon Brown fails to
start on educating people that the current prices of oil and food are
only the foothills of a daunting, permanently exacerbating technological
shortfall of affordable energy. And I’ve not seen any mass media
putting out headline campaigns about how the need to reduce energy
dependency is slightly more pressing than continuing questions about the
McCann’s lost child. The big thing in the Express this week is its
“crusade” for fuel tax cuts! If I ever see the headline “Speedophiles
kill hundreds more than paedophiles” then I’ll become a believer.

For reasons I explained in my book (link below), “leading” politicians
are incurably incapable of genuine leadership aimed at helping the
community in general. So pinning one’s hopes on them will be in vain.

We need to see a credible plan of how a million city-dwellers are going
to maintain their supply of food without recourse to unaffordable
international transport, or even via unaffordable transport from farms
40 miles away using unaffordable tractors and unavailable oil-enabled
fertilisers. Ok, that’s an easy challenge for me to write and hard for
anyone to answer. But these questions surely do need to be answered, as
a matter of life and death. At the moment all I see is a million people
who won’t have a clue how to generate their own food supply (a lot more
than can be done with windowboxes) if, or rather when, Tesco et al go
bust in the next few years. I can’t see any realistic solution to that
problem beyond a daunting level of urgent re-education and redeployment
out to the countryside, to the extent that the city ceases to be a city.

The Future is Here by Robin Clarke can be downloaded from the lulu.com website

THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF ROBIN CLARKE. THEY DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF GREENINBRUM

GreeninBrum welcomes opinion pages on guest issues. If you have a response to this page, you can get in touch with the Council, or add a comment to this page. We would particularly welcome responses from the Council. See the Council web page on the Cycling Stategy

What’s wrong with the Birmingham Cycling Strategy ?

1.
The new cycling strategy proposed for Birmingham is a radical departure, which would turn the previous 20 years of cycling policy inside out. Previous policy sought to provide safe alternatives for cyclists to the major traffic routes. This new approach defines the ‘main transport corridors’ as being the future ‘strategic cycling corridors’.
2.
The aim to make cycling ‘a viable alternative to the car’ is new. A bicycle is much slower more vulnerable and limited in range than a car. It has different needs and different constraints. It is used for different types of journeys.
3.
Cycling is not a strategic mode of transport and does [not] require strategic routes. It is a local mode whose whole advantage lies in its convenience speed and flexibility over relatively short journeys. It is not comparable with a car or bus. It is not motor traffic.
4.
Cyclists do not need to concentrate on strategic traffic corridors. There is no evidence of them being ‘desire lines’ for cyclists. Cycle journeys do not focus on the city centre in the way that bus and car commuting does because most residential areas of the city are too far to cycle into the centre. The city boundary is not a destination for cyclists. Rather, cyclists disperse over the whole street network and their destinations are multiple. Schools, colleges, university campuses are not shown on the map of ‘strategic routes’, although they are major destinations and promoting such cycling is supposed to be the object of actions 9, 10. 11, 12. Canals form a flat and safe set of routes that are popular with cyclists, but are not shown on the route map.
5.
The map of ‘strategic cycling corridors’ proposed is a motorists’ or bus users’ map of Birmingham. It reflects heavy traffic flow into and out of the city every day. These are not ‘desire lines’ for cyclists in fact they are the routes on which cyclists do not wish to travel because they seek to avoid conflict with heavy traffic.
6.
All surveys of why more people do not cycle in Britain and especially in Birmingham put fear of traffic danger as the main reason. We have to stop disbelieving and down playing these results. Actually there is a strong objective correlation between measurable traffic flow cycle accidents and low levels of cycling. This is true; historically between towns and between countries – traffic suppresses cycling and the heavier the traffic flow the more cycling is suppressed.
7.
The new Cycling Strategy does not identify the problems cyclists have with traffic – SPEED, CONFLICT, DANGER so does not suggest measures that would actually help i.e. protect cyclists from danger. Instead, it emphasises promotion i.e. telling people to cycle because it is healthy fun and good for the planet. This will fail as people have already concluded that cycling is actually frightening and dangerous, and with good reason – on most of Birmingham’s main roads it is exactly that.
8.
The strategic traffic corridors have the heavy traffic flows. They are engineered for this with light-controlled junctions and roundabouts. They are lined with parked cars. Motorists take advantage of capacity by higher speeds outside the peak period. They are major bus routes and preferred routes for heavy goods vehicles. They have the least available space for all road users and the greatest competition between them. Cycle accidents do cluster along main roads which have been designed for speeds they cannot match. Vehicle pollution is of course highest along these routes. The affect the ‘corridor’ with vehicles coming on or off and rat running to avoid them. Cyclists behave quite rationally in avoiding them.
9.
Experience of putting expensive cycle facilities along major traffic routes is that they are hardly used. They are located where the cyclists are not; the Northfield Bypass being a recent example. ‘Facilities’ generally slow down the cyclist in the interest of their safety. It would be better to be on a route that is intrinsically safer, because less trafficked. There would be no incentive to divert onto these busy traffic corridors.
Some people do cycle along main roads, i.e. they try to behave like cars. They will ignore and bypass any cycle safety measures that slow them down. This behaviour is not relevant to the 98% of people who are currently refusing to cycle in Birmingham or at least on its major road systems.
Why would it be an objective to get people to cycle along the routes that they currently avoid? The likely outcome is that cycle facilities on major roads would not be used and far from ‘raising the profile of cycling’ would be taken as proof that there is no demand to cycle. People would park and drive on the unused cycle lanes advanced stop lines etc as they do now…
10.
If cycling is ‘delivered as part of Red Routes and bus show-case schemes’ we would be planning in constant conflict between buses and cyclists. The aim of such schemes is to keep traffic especially buses moving removing the pauses in flow that cyclists need to make their manoeuvres. Since the function of the ‘main transport corridors’ is to bring traffic into the city the aim there to reduce traffic congestion reduce delays and outside the peak period allow fast movement. Cyclists would be moving at 15mph on roads designed for 50mph with roundabouts and multiple lanes. This is a dangerous strategy.
Main bus routes are exactly where a person not in car has a comfortable alternative to cycling in wind, rain, heavy traffic etc. Rather than compete with the bus on such routes, people may board the bus! It is on journeys that cannot be done easily by bus that the bike comes into its own.
11.
Since there is no plan to reduce vehicles to 20mph on these routes cyclists need to be where that is the normal speed i.e. back streets off the ‘main transport corridors’. Any street or even path is adequate to cycle on. Most cyclists in Birmingham at any time are probably on the footway. The most popular routes for commuting by cyclists are the Worcester canal, Grand Union canal and Rea Valley cycleway because they are not in the ‘main transport corridors’. The ‘Cycling and Walking’ map of Birmingham has proved very popular because it shows ways to cycle with minimum contact with main roads i.e. it the mirror opposite of the motorists’ map.
12.
While cycling has declined nationally for 50 years on the road system, the protected routes built by Sustrans have seen equally steady increases in use. The Sustrans approach has been backed by the public in a recent poll on how Lottery money should be spent. In Birmingham. The City Council’s approach for 20 years has been to provide quiet routes away from main roads, as this is what people have consistently asked for. All towns and cities that seek to promote cycling do this by providing for relatively protected routes. Cyclists benefit from all measures to slow traffic and keep it off the side streets with other benefits for residents and pedestrians.
13.
London has seen a great growth of cycling consequent on the big drop in traffic volumes caused by the congestion charge with many more streets becoming ‘lightly trafficked’ and people taking to their bikes. If it is not the intention in Birmingham to reduce traffic flows overall, e.g. by a congestion charge, then the City Council should work with people’s perceptions and behaviour not against them – which are clearly to cycle where they feel safe and unthreatened.
14.
Since back street cycle routes are much cheaper to provide, the Council can provide for many more people, going to many more destinations by this approach – with much more success. The obvious alternative for a local mode of transport is Local Cycling Networks or zones. These would focus on a local centre, or educational establishment, connecting them to residential street network. By passing through more than one network, one could make longer journeys, but calling them ‘strategic would be confusing…. For some people who live in the inner city, the city entre may be their local centre, but we should not over-exaggerate this as a cycling destination.

John Newson 23/04/08

This page states the personal viewpoint of John Newson. It is not a policy statement by GreeninBrum.