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Javier E

How China's buses shaped the world's EV revolution - BBC Future - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...le-revolution-began-with-buses

china EV buses transport public response climate change history policy

shared by Javier E on 20 Dec 23 - No Cached
  • After around two decades of government support, China now boasts the world's largest market for e-buses, making up more than 95% of global stock. At the end of 2022, China's Ministry of Transport announced that more than three-quarters (77% or 542,600) of all urban buses in the country were "new energy vehicles", a term used by the Chinese government to include pure electric, plug-in hybrids, and fuel cell vehicles powered by alternative fuels such as hydrogen and methanol. In 2022, around 84% of the new energy bus fleet was pure electric.
  • . In 2015, 78% of Chinese urban buses still used diesel or gas, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI). The NGO now estimates that if China follows through on its stated decarbonisation policies, its road transport emissions will peak before 2030.
  • China is also home to some of the world's biggest electric bus manufacturers, such as Yutong, which has been raking up orders across China, Europe and Latin America.
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  • "China has really been at the forefront of success in conversion of all vehicles to electric vehicles, especially buses," says Heather Thompson, chief executive officer of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), a non-profit focusing on sustainable transport solutions. "The rest of the world is trying to do the same, but I think China is really out ahead."
  • At the time of China's 2001 entry into the World Trade Organisation, the international automotive industry was dominated by European, US and Japanese brands. These companies had spent decades perfecting internal combustion engine technology. To compete, Beijing decided to find a new track for its auto industry: making cars that did not use conventional engines.
  • That same year, the central government launched the so-called "863 plan" for EV research and development. There were numerous practical challenges, however, in the way of mass electrification. Not many manufacturers were making new energy vehicles, buyers were few and there was a lack of charging infrastructure in existence. The answer? Buses.
  • "The Chinese government adopted a very smart strategy," says Liu Daizong, ITDP's East Asia director. "They realised quite early on that they should drive [the EV industry] through electric buses," he notes, since their public service status meant Beijing "could have a strong hand on their electrification".
  • "Bus routes were fixed. This means when an electric bus finished a round, it could return to the depot to recharge," explains Xue Lulu, a mobility manager at the World Resources Institute (WRI) China. The typical daily mileage of a Chinese bus ­– 200km (120 miles) – was a realistic range for battery makers to meet.
  • The following year, the country began its large-scale rollout of new energy buses, with the "Ten Cities and Thousand Vehicles" programme. Over three years, the programme aimed to provide 10 cities with financial subsidies to promote 1,000 public-sector new energy vehicles in each, annually. Its goal was to have 10% new energy vehicles in the country by the end of 2012.
  • Strong policy support from both central and regional governments "gave manufacturers confidence in setting up production lines and stepping up research efforts," says Liu.
  • Together, these strong and consistent government signals encouraged Chinese manufacturers to expand their EV production capacity, bring down costs and improve their technologies. One such company was Build Your Dream, better known as BYD. The Shenzhen-based firm, the world's largest EV maker in 2022, ballooned its business a decade before by supplying electric buses and taxis for China's EV pilot cities.
  • "Back then, most buses used diesel, which was a main source of nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions," says Xue, referring to the air pollution that smothered Beijing and other Chinese cities in the early 2010s. Yet in 2013, a new plan from central government cited tackling air pollution as one of the reasons for rolling out EVs.
  • This addition proved to be critical: it not only connected EV uptake with people's health, it also indirectly tied the e-bus campaign to local officials' political performance, as the central government would soon hand air-quality targets to all provinces.
  • The years 2013 and 2014 proved to be important for China's EV push. For the first time, the central government made EV purchase subsidies available to individual consumers, not just the public sector, opening the floodgate to private ownership. Additionally, it offered discounted electricity tariffs to bus operators to make sure the cost of running electric buses would be "significantly lower than" that of their oil or gas-powered equivalents.
  • The new economic push, plus local government's determination to battle air pollution, generated great enthusiasm for e-buses. By the end of 2015, the number of EV pilot cities rocketed from 25 to 88. In the same year, the central government set a target of 200,000 new energy buses on the road by 2020 and announced a plan to phase out its subsidies for fossil-fuel-powered buses.
  • To further stimulate the market, many cities devised various local policies on top of national incentives. For example, Shenzhen, a southern city with a population of more than 17 million, encouraged government agencies to work with private companies to create a full range of renting mechanisms for bus operators
  • Different cities' bus operators also designed different charging strategies. "Buses in Shenzhen had bigger batteries, so they normally charged overnight," says Xue, of WRI China. Between 2016 and 2020, Shanghai, another electric bus hub, subsidised the electricity e-buses used -- regardless of the hours of the day -- to give them more flexibility in charging.
  • Generous financial support did lead to problems. In 2016, an EV subsidy fraud shook China, with some bus operators found to have exaggerated the number of e-buses they had purchased. So that same year Beijing shifted its EV subsidy rules so bus operators could only receive financial support when a bus's mileage reached 30,000km (19,000 miles).
  • one year later, the government announced the so-called "dual-credit" policy. This allowed new energy vehicle makers to rake up credits which they could sell for cash to those needing to offset "negative credits" generated from making conventional cars.
  • it wasn't only China's buses that had benefitted.China's e-bus campaign helped create a big and stable market for its wider EV industry, brought down the costs and created economies of scale. In 2009, the year the e-bus campaign was rolled out, the total number of new energy vehicles sold stood at 2,300; by 2022, it was 6.9 million, analysis by Huang Zheng,
  • By 2022, the country had also built the world's largest EV charging network, with 1.8 million public charging stations – or two-thirds of the global total – and 3.4 million private equivalents. This means that on average, there is one charging pillar for every 2.5 of China's 13.1 million new energy vehicles.
  • Cold weather is a problem, too, as it can make a battery's charging time longer and its range shorter. The reason China has not achieved 100% electrification for its buses is its northern regions, which have harsh winters, says Xue.
  • To make e-buses truly "green", they should also be charged with renewable power, Wang says. But last year coal power still accounted for 58.4% of China's energy mix, according to the China Electricity Council, a trade body..
  • Globally, however, China is now in a league of its own in uptake of e-buses. By 2018, about 421,000 of the world's 425,000 electric buses were located in China; Europe had about 2,250 and the US owned around 300. A
  • But earlier this year, the European Commission announced a zero-emission target for all new city buses by 2030. And some countries are increasing their overall funding for the transition.
  • In 2020, the European Commission approved Germany's plan to double its aid for e-buses to €650m (£558m/$707m), then again in 2021 to €1.25 billion euros (£1.07m/$1.3bn). And the UK, which last year had the largest electric bus fleet in Europe with 2,226 pure electric and hybrid buses, has announced another £129m ($164m) to help bus operators buy zero-emissions fleets.
  • Countries have thus responded to China's manufacturing lead in divergent ways. "While the US has opted for a more competitive angle by fostering its own e-bus production, regions like Latin America are more open to trade with China due to a more friendly trading setup through [China's] Belt and Road Initiative,"
  • In order to avoid direct competition from Chinese manufacturers, the US has come up with a "school-bus strategy", says Liu. The Chinese don't make the iconic yellow vehicles, so this could ignite American e-bus manufacturing and create a local industry chain, he suggests. Backed by the US Environmental Protection Agency's $5bn (£3.9bn) Clean School Bus Programme, the national effort has so far committed to providing 5,982 buses.
  • In contrast, many Latin American cities, such as the Colombian capital of Bogota and the Chilean capital of Santiago, are greening their traditional bus sectors with the help of Chinese manufacturers, who are the largest providers to the region. In 2020, Chile became the country that had the most Chinese e-buses outside of China, and this year Santiago's public transport operator announced it has ordered 1,022 e-buses from Beijing-based Foton Motor, the biggest overseas deal the firm had received.
  • Chinese manufacturers are likely to receive a lot more orders from Chile and its neighbours in this decade. According to latest research by the global C40 Cities network, the number of electric buses in 32 Latin American cities is expected to increase by more than seven times by 2030, representing an investment opportunity of over $11.3bn (£8.9bn)
  • In June 2023, BloombergNEF forecast half of the world's buses to be entirely battery-powered by 2032, a decade ahead of cars. And by 2026, 36% and 24% of municipal bus sales in Europe and the US, respectively, are expected to be EVs as they begin to catch up with China
  • To meet the global climate goals set by the Paris Agreement, simply switching the world's existing bus fleets might not be enough. According to ITDP, the cumulative greenhouse gas emissions from urban passenger transport globally must stay below the equivalent of 66 gigatonnes CO2 between 2020 and 2050 for the world to meet the 1.5C temperature goal. This emissions limit will only be possible when the world not only adopts electric buses, but goes through a broader shift away from private transport
  • "We can't just focus on [replacing] the buses that exist, we need to actually get many, many more buses on the streets," Thompson adds. She and her team estimate that the world would need about 10 million more buses through 2030, and 46 million more buses cumulatively through 2050, to make public transport good enough to have a shot at achieving the Paris Agreement. And all those buses will need to be electric.
  • In China therefore, even though EVs are being sold faster than ever, its central government has instructed cities to encourage public transport use, as well as walking and riding bikes.
  • In Wang's hometown, meanwhile, which has just over three million residents, the local government has gone one step further and made all bus rides free. All citizens need to do is to swipe an app, with no charge, to get onto the bus. "My aunt loves taking buses now," says Wang. "She says it is so convenient."
xaviermcelderry

FBI investigating alleged harassment of Biden campaign bus - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

TrumpTrain Biden election

shared by xaviermcelderry on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The incident took place in Texas on Friday as the campaign bus was traveling from San Antonio to Austin as part of a push to urge Biden supporters to cast their ballots on the state's last day of early voting. A Biden campaign official described the motorists' actions as an attempt to slow down the bus and run it off the road.
  • People in vehicles that were part of a "Trump Train" began yelling profanities and obscenities and then blockaded the entire Biden entourage, according to a source familiar with the incident.At one point they slowed the tour bus to roughly 20 mph on Interstate 35, the campaign official said. The vehicles slowed down to try to stop the bus in the middle of the highway. The source said there were nearly 100 vehicles around the campaign bus. Biden staffers were rattled by the event, the source said, though no one was hurt.
  • Neither Biden nor his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, were on the bus. Multiple sources told CNN that Wendy Davis, a former state senator who is challenging Republican Rep. Chip Roy for Texas' 21st Congressional District, was on the bus. Davis' campaign declined to comment to CNN on Saturday.
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  • President Donald Trump tweeted a video of the bus incident with the words "I LOVE TEXAS!" on Saturday, and claimed at a campaign rally on Sunday that his supporters were "protecting" the bus.
knudsenlu

Claudette Colvin: The 15-year-old who came before Rosa Parks - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/stories-43171799

parks colvin history civil rights US

shared by knudsenlu on 12 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • In March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks defied segregation laws by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin did exactly the same thing. Eclipsed by Parks, her act of defiance was largely ignored for many years. She herself didn't talk about it much, but she spoke recently to the BBC.
  • "I remember during Easter one year, I was to get a pair of black patent shoes but you could only get them from the white stores, so my mother drew the outline of my feet on a brown paper bag in order to get the closest size, because we weren't allowed to go in the store to try them on."
  • "The white people were always seated at the front of the bus and the black people were seated at the back of the bus. The bus driver had the authority to assign the seats, so when more white passengers got on the bus, he asked for the seats."
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  • "He wanted me to give up my seat for a white person and I would have done it for an elderly person but this was a young white woman. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window," she says.
  • Under the twisted logic of segregation the white woman still couldn't sit down, as then white and black passengers would have been sharing a row of seats - and the whole point was that white passengers were meant to be closer to the front.
  • "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. I don't know how I got off that bus but the other students said they manhandled me off the bus and put me in the squad car. But what I do remember is when they asked me to stick my arms out the window and that's when they handcuffed me," Colvin says.
  • Instead of being taken to a juvenile detention centre, Colvin was taken to an adult jail and put in a small cell with nothing in it but a broken sink and a cot without a mattress.
  • After Colvin was released from prison, there were fears that her home would be attacked. Members of the community acted as lookouts, while Colvin's father sat up all night with a shotgun, in case the Ku Klux Klan turned up.
clairemann

Trump Jokes His Supporters Were 'Protecting' Biden's Bus On Highway | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...arm_n_5f9f0687c5b65662bcc83c9b

US voting election trump

shared by clairemann on 01 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump on Sunday mockingly claimed that his supporters were “protecting” a campaign bus belonging to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden when a caravan of vehicles dangerously surrounded it on a Texas highway, leading to a vehicular collision.
  • “They were protecting their bus yesterday because they’re nice,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan to cheers, laughter and applause.
  • tour bus being surrounded by vehicles with Trump flags.
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  • The person recording it jokes that they’re trying to run Biden out of Texas. As the camera pans to the surrounding drivers, two vehicles directly behind the bus ram into one another.
  • Biden’s campaign and state Democrats canceled multiple events in Texas following the incident.
  • said that Trump wouldn’t endorse “hurting other people.” On Saturday, Trump tweeted a video of the vehicles with the caption: “I LOVE TEXAS!”
  • “Certainly you don’t want harm, and we shouldn’t be hurting other people so the president would not endorse that,”
Javier E

The Bus Is the Best Public Transit for Cities - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...574399

public transit transportation urban city economics

shared by Javier E on 04 Nov 18 - No Cached
  • A city is a place where many people live close together. The problem of urban transportation is a problem of sharing space.
  • When you drive alone (or take Uber alone) in a gridlocked street or freeway, you are taking more than your fair share of the limited space. When stuck in traffic, you are blocking others from moving freely.
  • If cities want to move people faster than walking while allowing them to take up only their fair share of space, two options arise. One is to use a vehicle that’s not much bigger than the human body, such as bicycles and scooters. Those tools work well for certain people in particular circumstances, but not for everyone. The other option is to share the ride in a vehicle. If space is really scarce, that vehicle will have to carry lots of people. In most cases, riders will have to share a vehicle with strangers, people who are not traveling for the same purposes or even to the same places. That’s what public transit is.
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  • So what technologies make sense in public transit? Efficient transit networks are made of many technologies, each the right one for its own situation. Rail is for high-capacity markets, where you need to move hundreds of people per vehicle. Ferries and aerial gondolas overcome certain obstacles. But everywhere else, the bus is the thing that’s easiest to make abundant. Because labor is the main limit on their quantity, they can be much more abundant after full automation.
  • Fixed public transit deploys large vehicles flowing along a set path, and riders gathering at stops to use them. That way, the vehicles can follow a fairly straight line, and they don’t need to stop once for every customer. That is what makes them worth walking to get to. It is one of the best ideas in the history of transportation
  • And walking is key to it. Out in low-density suburbs, residents can also drive to fixed-transit stops. But in the dense city, there’s no room for that. The microtransit promise of “service to your door” is a promise to abolish walking, and yet walking is the essence of how people share precious space.
  • If the buses are terrible in your city, you may think that buses are terrible in general. In truth, a city’s bus service is as good as its leaders and voters want it to be. Where voters have funded better bus services and cities have worked to give them priority, as in Seattle, ridership has soared.
  • The starvation of high-ridership public transit in America is a choice, one that Americans don’t have to make. I work in cities all over the developed world, but my U.S. clients always have the poorest transit budgets, requiring the most painful trade-offs. They can’t afford to run the frequent and reliable fixed-route services that would do well, so they are forced to run poor service, yielding low ridership, feeding the impression that transit is pointless
leilamulveny

Vehicles flying Trump flags try to force a Biden-Harris campaign bus off a highway in T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...us-off-a-highway-in-texas.html

force Trump

shared by leilamulveny on 04 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • AUSTIN, Texas — Multiple vehicles bearing Trump flags and signs surrounded a Biden-Harris campaign bus heading from San Antonio to Austin on Friday, forcing campaign officials to scrap two campaign events, according to reports by Democratic officials on Saturda
  • Katie Naranjo, chair of the Travis County Democratic Party, tweeted that Trump supporters also “ran into a person’s car, yelling curse words and threats.”
  • The bus was occupied by campaign staff workers, who notified local law enforcement, which assisted the vehicle in reaching its destination, party officials said.
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  • Out of “an abundance of caution,” they said, the campaign canceled an event scheduled for later that day at a parking lot belonging to the Texas A.F.L.-C.I.O. in downtown Austin
  • “Rather than engage in productive conversation about the drastically different visions that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have for our country, Trump supporters in Texas instead decided to put our staff, surrogates, supporters, and others in harm’s way,” Tariq Thowfeek, the Texas communications director for the Biden for President campaign, said in a statement.
  • Efforts to contact the Texas Department of Public Safety to determine the possibility of any law enforcement action also were not immediately successful.
  • “Anybody see the picture of their crazy bus driving down the highway, they are surrounded by hundreds of cars, they are all Trump flags all over the place,” Mr. Trump said, chuckling.
Javier E

Opinion | I've Seen a Future Without Cars, and It's Amazing - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ban-cars-manhattan-cities.html

car transportation urbanism urban nyc future

shared by Javier E on 09 Jul 20 - No Cached
  • Rather than stumble back into car dependency, cities can begin to undo their worst mistake: giving up so much of their land to the automobile.
  • There is little evidence that public transit is responsible for the spread of the coronavirus in New York or elsewhere; some cities with heavily used transit systems, including Hong Kong, were able to avoid terrible tolls from the virus.
  • rian paths for people to avoid intense overcrowding — transit might be no less safe than cars, in terms of the risk of the spread of disease. In all other measures of safety, transit is far safer than cars.
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  • Chakrabarti is among a group of urbanists who’ve been calling attention to a less-discussed problem with cars. Automobiles are not just dangerous and bad for the environment, they are also profoundly wasteful of the land around us: Cars take up way too much physical space to transport too few people. It’s geometry.
  • In most American cities, wherever you look, you will see a landscape constructed primarily for the movement and storage of automobiles, not the enjoyment of people: endless wide boulevards and freeways for cars to move swiftly; each road lined with parking spaces for cars at rest; retail establishments ringed with spots for cars; houses built around garages for cars; and a gas station, for cars to feed, on every other corner.
  • In the most car-dependent cities, the amount of space devoted to automobiles reaches truly ridiculous levels. In Los Angeles, for instance, land for parking exceeds the entire land area of Manhattan, enough space to house almost a million more people at Los Angeles’s prevailing density.
  • in the most populated cities, physical space is just about the most precious resource there is. The land value of Manhattan alone is estimated to top $1.7 trillion. Why are we giving so much of it to cars?
  • Without cars, Manhattan’s streets could give priority to more equitable and accessible ways of getting around, including an extensive system of bike “superhighways” and bus rapid transit — a bus system with dedicated lanes in the roadway, creating a service that approaches the capacity, speed and efficiency of the subway, at a fraction of the cost.
  • The amount of space devoted to cars in Manhattan is not just wasteful, but, in a deeper sense, unfair to the millions of New Yorkers who have no need for cars.
  • More than half of the city’s households do not own a car, and of those who do, most do not use them for commuting. Of the 1.6 million commuters who come into Manhattan every weekday (or, who did, before the virus), more than 80 percent make the trip via public transit, mostly trains and buses. Only around 12 percent of daily commuters get to the island by car.
  • New York’s drivers are essentially being given enormous tracts of land for their own pleasure and convenience. To add the overall misery of the situation, though, even the drivers are not especially happy about the whole deal, because despite all the roadway they’ve been given, they’re still stuck in gridlock.
  • cars are not just greedy for physical space, they’re insatiable. There is even a term for the phenomenon: “induced demand,” which holds that the more land you give to cars, the more attractive driving becomes, leading to more traffic, leading to more roads — an unwinnable cycle that ends with every inch of our cities paved under parking lot.
  • Even if you’re a committed daily driver, “it’s in your best interest for walking, biking and public transit to be as attractive as possible for everyone else — because that means you’re going to be able to drive easier.”
  • PAU’s plan bears this out. Banning private cars on Manhattan would reduce traffic by as much as 20 percent on routes that start and end within New York’s other boroughs — that is, in places where cars would still be allowed
  • Under PAU’s plan, road traffic in a car-free Manhattan would fall by about 60 percent. The absence of cars would allow pedestrians, buses and bikes to race across New York at unheard-of speeds. Today, a bus trip from uptown to downtown — for instance, from Harlem to City Hall — takes an hour and 48 minutes. With the sort of rapid bus system PAU imagines, and without cars in the way, the same trek would take 35 minutes.
dpittenger

BBC News - Ukraine conflict: Shell hits bus 'killing 12' in Buhas - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-europe-30798426

ukraine conflict shell bus crisis

shared by dpittenger on 15 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • A shell has hit a bus in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 12 civilians and wounding many more, Ukraine's military says.
  • In a statement, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko condemned the attack, blaming the rebels and those "who is arming them and inspiring to commit bloody crimes".
  • But following talks in Berlin on Monday, foreign ministers for the four countries said that "further work needs to be done" before a summit could be held.
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  • In another development, the US Treasury said it would provide a $1bn (£660m) loan guarantee to Ukraine in the first half of 2015, provided Ukraine remained on track to meet the conditions of its loan from the International Monetary Fund.
  • dpittenger on 15 Jan 15
     
    Attacks with shells in the Ukraine are still causing conflict. The US treasury is providing 1billion dollars to Ukraine in the first half of 2015.
Javier E

Democrats Can Reach More Working Class Voters - by Ruy Teixeira - The Liberal Patriot - 0 views

theliberalpatriot.substack.com/...mocrats-can-reach-more-working

Democratic party working class policy messaging culture

shared by Javier E on 21 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • The divorce between Democrats and the working class just continues to grow. Despite a slight improvement, Democrats still lost white working class (noncollege) voters in 2020 by 26 points (Catalist two party vote). Since 2012, nonwhite working class voters have shifted away from the Democrats by 18 points, with a particularly sharp shift in the last election and particularly among Hispanics.
  • In the recent Virginia gubernatorial election, Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe lost working class voters overall by 7 points, with large swings against the Democrats among the overwhelmingly working class Hispanic population (the same basic pattern can be seen in the New Jersey election results).
  • Recent generic Congressional ballot results show Democrats’ working class support as the mirror image of their college graduate support—strongly negative among working class voters, strongly positive among college graduate voters. But there are way more working class voters than college graduate voters.
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  • In other words, AOC can win in NY-14 but AOC-type candidates are no solution at all to the Democrats’ working class problems in most areas of the country. The grim fact is that as education polarization has played out geographically, Democratic votes are now distributed so inefficiently that the translation of these votes into political power has been severely undercut
  • As a result, Democrats’ hold on political power is ever on a knife’s edge even when their last election was a good one (as it is today).
  • Consistent with other recent research, the study finds that:
  • Working-class voters prefer progressive candidates who focus primarily on bread-and-butter economic issues, and who frame those issues in universal terms.
  • Candidates whose campaigns focused primarily on universalist policy issues such as jobs, health care, and the economy performed better than those who focused on group-specific policies, such as racial justice or immigration.
  • In addition, woke messaging decreased the appeal of other candidate characteristics. For example, candidates employing woke messaging who championed either centrist or progressive economic, health care, or civil rights policy priorities were viewed less favorably than their counterparts who championed the same priorities but opted for universalist messaging.
  • easier said than done given Democrats’ recent evolution away from universalist messaging and toward foregrounding the equity effects of unambiguously universal programs and deferring to group specific concerns around race, gender and sexuality, even where they are clearly unpopular and dubious as policy. The result has a been a shift in the Democratic party “brand” that has created barriers to Democratic party voting among broad swathes of the working class.
  • The grim prospects for the Democrats in 2022 and the gut-wrenching prospect of losing the White House to Donald Trump (again) in 2024 make clear the stakes.
  • A Democratic brand reset is clearly in order to stop the bleeding among working class voters, along the lines suggested by the Jacobin study. A good way to start would be to embrace widely-held American views and values that are particularly strong among the multiracial working class.
  • Equality of opportunity is a fundamental American principle; equality of outcome is not.America is not perfect but it is good to be patriotic and proud of the country.
  • Discrimination and racism are bad but they are not the cause of all disparities in American society.No one is completely without bias but calling all white people racists who benefit from white privilege and American society a white supremacist society is not right or fair.
  • America benefits from the presence of immigrants and no immigrant, even if illegal, should be mistreated. But border security is still important, as is an enforceable system that fairly decides who can enter the country.Police misconduct and brutality against people of any race is wrong and we need to reform police conduct and recruitment. But crime is a real problem so more and better policing is needed for public safety. That cannot be provided by “defunding the police”.
  • There are underlying differences between men and women but discrimination on the basis of gender is wrong.There are basically two genders but people who want to live as a gender different from their biological sex should have that right and not be discriminated against. However, there are issues around child consent to transitioning and participation in women’s sports that are complicated and not settled.
  • Racial achievement gaps are bad and we should seek to close them. However, they are not due just to racism and standards of high achievement should be maintained for people of all races.Language policing has gone too far; by and large, people should be able to express their views without fear of sanction by employer, school, institution or government. Good faith should be assumed, not bad faith.
  • Besides positively embracing these views it is necessary for major Democratic officeholders and candidates to actively dissociate themselves and their party from the woke stances that contradict these views and tarnish their brand among working class voters. That entails not just saying that one does not endorse now-familiar strands of cultural leftism but in some well-chosen places directly criticizing by name some who hold extreme views that are associated with the Democrats. That will be of great assistance in getting the message through to average working class voters.
  • these views are entirely consistent with a very progressive Democratic program in the areas of health care, education, social programs, jobs and the economy that would disproportionately benefit the poor and working class, and therefore blacks and Hispanics.
  • In that sense, one might respond to the inevitable accusation that a universalist, mainstream approach is tantamount to throwing loyal Democratic constituencies in need of help “under the bus”: who is throwing whom under the bus? Perhaps it is those who stand in the way of a Democratic approach that could plausibly generate the widest possible support that are throwing those who need help the most under the bus.
  • And this approach, unlike the Democrats’ current default setting, has the potential to make the Democrats and their progressive policies consistent winners
ecfruchtman

This Danish ad throws Donald Trump under the bus - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by ecfruchtman on 28 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • ecfruchtman on 28 Oct 16
     
    Thousands of kilometers away from the US soil, in the middle of the bustling city of Copenhagen, Denmark, several buses are traveling with massive mock-images of the US presidential candidate's forehead with wheels for eyes. The campaign's message -- ordered by the Danish Socialist People's Party (SF)-- reads in bold red letters: "Americans abroad, vote."
jlessner

Bus Driver in Delhi Gang Rape Blames Victim - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...hi-gang-rape-mukesh-singh.html

culture

shared by jlessner on 03 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • jlessner on 03 Mar 15
     
    NEW DELHI - In the months after a young woman was brutalized and gang-raped on a moving bus in New Delhi in 2012, thousands of politicians, activists and ordinary citizens crowded onto India's airwaves and into its public spaces to say their piece about the crime.
blaise_glowiak

Refugee crisis: Norway tells 5,500 foreigners who arrived on bikes to ride back across ... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...ss-the-border-to-a6812966.html

refugee crisis norway

shared by blaise_glowiak on 15 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • blaise_glowiak on 15 Jan 16
     
    Norway is preparing to send over 5,500 refugees who crossed into the country from Russia on bicycles last year back across the border by the same mode of transport. "We asked that the bikes which were left behind or claimed by the police to be gathered up for use by the foreigners who will be returned to Russia," Jan Erik Thomassen, a section head from Norway's National Police Directorate, said. "I can understand that it feels a bit awkward and odd." Norwegian authorities said they hope Russia will allow the refugees to re-enter its Russian territory by bus, which would reduce costs and provide safer passage for those making the journey. But Russia, which has remained hostile to refugees despite the influx of migrants into Europe last year, seems unlikely to comply.
Javier E

Farms aren't tossing perfectly good produce. You are. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...perfectly-good-produce-you-are

farm food waste recycling

shared by Javier E on 12 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • f food waste were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest emitter of CO2, after China and the United States. In our nation alone, we throw away some 63 million tons of food a year, even as 40 million Americans are considered food insecure.
  • boil down to the old mantra to reduce, reuse and recycle.
  • advocates are getting the problem exactly backward. Less than 20 percent of total food waste happens at farms and packinghouses, where the ugly-produce movement works its magic, according to ReFED, a nonprofit dedicated to researching food waste policies.
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  • The vast majority of waste — more than 80 percent — is generated by homes and consumer-facing businesses like grocery stores and restaurants.
  • The hype surrounding this movement is inflated by the public’s ignorance of the food supply chain.
  • Despite the dramatic anecdotes about truckloads of landfilled crops, little of farm waste is due to merely “cosmetic” blemishes. Much of it is bruised or weeping goods that can quickly break down and rot the entire crate. With many crops, misshapen produce knocks against its neighbors during transit, poking holes and jeopardizing entire bins. “Drops” (produce that’s fallen on the ground) are left behind because otherwise they tend to cause food-poisoning outbreaks. Farms till excessively damaged produce back into the soil along with the crop’s stems and leaves, recycling their nutrients.
  • North America’s packinghouses discard about 1 percent of the produce that enters their doors, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization — usually because it’s straight-up rotten.
  • For the most part, ugly-produce initiatives are simply gentrifying second-grade produce that was already being eaten — just not, perhaps, by upscale shoppers. It’s the food equivalent of Lyft “inventing” a bus.
  • The most effective ways to tackle that
  • “Approximately 20% of organic and conventional produce in the U.S. never leaves the farm just because it looks a little different. . . . We think that’s crazy.”
  • The single biggest source of U.S. food waste, accounting for 43 percent of the problem, is our own homes
  • Most of all, we should sync our shopping habits with our eating habits. Affluent shoppers waste the most produce because of how much of it they buy and then trash
  • The most important behavioral change consumers can make to address food waste isn’t to buy certain kinds of produce. It’s to actually eat what we bring home.
  • Homes, food service and grocery stores generate 7.8 million tons of food waste per year that can’t be salvaged, accounting for 12 percent of the problem. This waste needs to be recycled. The Environmental Protection Agency says that the United States composts only 5 percent of its food waste. (Compare that with 15 percent in the European Union.)
  • Biochar — made by heating inedible food and other organic waste until it becomes inert, odorless, nutrient-rich charcoal — could be a very effective way to recycle food waste, but it’s underutilized, because the equipment to do it at municipal scale is so new. Like composting, biochar can be used as a fertilizer, returning food waste’s nutrients back to the soil. Unlike composting, it can handle food waste that’s mixed with general nonhazardous trash — no need for costly separate collection and handling. Biochar also sequesters carbon for centuries.
  • But the infrastructure — donation matching software, cold storage and refrigerated trucks — to handle large donations of eggs, dairy, meat, bread and produce is still being built. Funding more food bank infrastructure, educating potential donors about liability laws, creating more donation tax incentives and standardizing food safety regulations would recover up to 996,000 tons of food, or 1.7 billion meals, per year, according to ReFED.
  • For certain crops like berries, tomatoes, leafy greens and cucumbers, farms can take advantage of state and federal funds that would help them switch from open-field to hoophouse or greenhouse methods. Already common in East Asia and Europe, these methods boost yields and dramatically reduce how much of the crop is too damaged to leave the farm
  • As long as we eat fresh food instead of shelf-stable nutrient bars, perishability is part of the bargain. The only way to completely eliminate food waste is to abolish fresh food. Beyond that, all we can do is manage the waste.
Cecilia Ergueta

Charles Mann: Can Planet Earth Feed 10 Billion People? - The Atlantic - 2 views

www.theatlantic.com/...550928

crisis future history policy economics

shared by Cecilia Ergueta on 24 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • Somewhere ahead is a cliff: a calamitous reversal of humanity’s fortunes. Nobody can see exactly where it is, but everyone knows that at some point the bus will have to turn. Problem is, Wizards and Prophets disagree about which way to yank the wheel. Each is certain that following the other’s ideas will send the bus over the cliff. As they squabble, the number of passengers keeps rising.
  • Nowadays the Prophets’ fears about industrial agriculture’s exhausting the soil seem prescient: A landmark 2011 study from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization concluded that up to a third of the world’s cropland is degraded.
  • At first, reconciling the two points of view might have been possible. One can imagine Borlaugian Wizards considering manure and other natural soil inputs, and Vogtian Prophets willing to use chemicals as a supplement to good soil practice. But that didn’t happen. Hurling insults, the two sides moved further apart. They set in motion a battle that has continued into the 21st century—and become ever more intense with the ubiquity of genetically modified crops. That battle is not just between two philosophies, two approaches to technology, two ways of thinking how best to increase the food supply for a growing population. It is about whether the tools we choose will ensure the survival of the planet or hasten its destruction.
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  • If farmers must grow twice as much food to feed the 10 billion, following the ecosystem-conserving rules of Sir Albert Howard ties their hands.
  • Prophets smite their brows at this logic. To their minds, evaluating farm systems wholly in terms of calories per acre is folly. It doesn’t include the sort of costs identified by Vogt: fertilizer runoff, watershed degradation, soil erosion and compaction, and pesticide and antibiotic overuse.
  • To Borlaugians, farming is a kind of useful drudgery that should be eased and reduced as much as possible to maximize individual liberty. To Vogtians, agriculture is about maintaining a set of communities, ecological and human, that have cradled life since the first agricultural revolution, 10,000-plus years ago. It can be drudgery, but it is also work that reinforces the human connection to the Earth. The two arguments are like skew lines, not on the same plane.
anonymous

Self-driving shuttle bus in crash on first day - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...technology-41923814

technology development US

shared by anonymous on 09 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • A self-driving shuttle bus in Las Vegas was involved in a crash on its first day of service.
  • Nobody was injured in the incident which city officials say was the fault of the human driver of the lorry. The man was subsequently given a ticket by police.
  • A spokesman for the City of Las Vegas told the BBC the crash was a “fender bender” - a minor collision - and that the shuttle would likely be back out on the road on Thursday after some routine diagnostics tests.
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  • Self-driving technology has been involved in crashes before, but almost all reported incidents have been due to human error.
ecfruchtman

Egypt: At least 28 die in Coptic Christian bus attack - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by ecfruchtman on 05 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • ecfruchtman on 05 Jun 17
     
    At least 28 people were killed in Egypt after unidentified gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying Coptic Christians in what officials are calling a terror attack.
anonymous

Activists seek political power months after the murder of George Floyd - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by anonymous on 06 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Carter was one of many activists protesting in the wake of Floyd's murder in Minneapolis at the hands of police. And now a year later, Floyd's death is a big part of the reason why many activists are running for local office across the country.
  • Carter decided to run for mayor in Sandy Springs, Georgia, after he said he grew emotionally exhausted from attending what felt like unending protests for Black people killed during police encounters and other racists attacks.
  • Videos capturing the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man shot and killed while running in a Georgia neighborhood, and George Floyd gave him something to point out the inequalities Carter knew, but perhaps others hadn't seen.
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  • For Carter, it's about more than just social justice movements. He believes his city's leadership, especially the executive office, should reflect the population.
  • For Carter and other activists-turned-political candidates, making the decision to run felt like an actionable step after a year of such frustration and anger.
  • Tate took on criminal justice reform years before protests for Floyd took over streets across the country.
  • He created a name for himself while leading marches and protests following the deaths of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a Black woman shot and killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky.
  • LaTonya Tate is not new to the fight to make the justice system more just. As a Black woman in the South and part of a family with a history of activism, it has been ever-present. And as a retired parole officer, she knows a good deal about the justice system and its failures.
  • Ossé is running for a seat on the city council representing his district in Brooklyn, New York. If elected, he would become one of the youngest, and one of the first self-described queer city council members in New York City.
  • She believes she can lead desperately needed and uncomfortable conversations if she is elected to the city council in Birmingham, Alabama.
  • Tate is advocating for community policing. She believes in reallocating funds from police to invest in the community with mental health training, health care, education, youth programs and social services.
  • Francois Alexandre believes that a community policing role is crucial for accountability. It's what he'd like to change when it comes to law enforcement in his district in Miami if he wins a seat on the Miami City Commission.
  • Charlotte, North Carolina City Council member Braxton Winston knows the path these activists are taking well. He was the subject of an iconic photo depicting the tension between police and protesters after an officer shot and killed Keith Scott, a Black Charlotte resident in 2016.
  • Winston's gained victories to defund chemical agents for crowd control, which he says led to a broader conversation about the overall role of government in ensuring public safety. He says he has learned that support and political will are essential and in ways he is not set up to succeed.
  • The Black Voters Matter organization, which aims to increase power in the black community through voter outreach and advocacy, says efforts are underway to engage black voters and to build voting power.
  • In June, the organization plans to launch a bus campaign to engage Black voters while commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Rides movement, bus tours taken by civil rights activists in the '60s to fight segregation in the South.
  • Carter hopes this can be a moment where the country looks deep into its soul and reckons with its past.
xaviermcelderry

Before the Capitol Riot, Calls for Cash and Talk of Revolution - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...capitol-riot-funding.html

Riot Capitalpolice

shared by xaviermcelderry on 17 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • In online videos, the 41-year-old Texan pointed out the flimsiness of the fencing. He cheered the arrival, long before President Trump’s rally at the other end of the mall, of far-right militiamen encircling the building. Then, armed with a bullhorn, Mr. Lee called out for the mob to rush in, until his voice echoed from the dome of the Rotunda.
  • By far the most visible financial backer of Women for America First’s efforts was Mike Lindell, a founder of the MyPillow bedding company, identified on a now-defunct website as one of the “generous sponsors” of a bus tour promoting Mr. Trump's attempt to overturn the election. In addition, he was an important supporter of Right Side Broadcasting, an obscure pro-Trump television network that provided blanket coverage of Trump rallies after the vote, and a podcast run by the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon that also sponsored the bus tour.
  • Wild Protest linked to three hotels with discounted rates and another site for coordinating travel plans. It also raised donations from thousands of individuals, according to archived versions of a web portal used to collect them. The website has since been taken down, and it is not clear what the money was used for.
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  • “American citizens feel like they’ve been attacked. Fear’s reaction is anger, anger’s reaction is patriotism and voilà — you get a war,” said Mr. Lee’s co-host, who gave his name as Rampage.
katherineharron

Amy Klobuchar races to turn debate moment into campaign momentum - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 22 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • "I have a lot of really good proposals out there -- and I show how I'm going to pay for them," the Minnesota Democrat told a crowded room of voters here over the weekend, taking another not-so-subtle dig at one of her leading 2020 rivals. "I think we need to be really honest with people right now."It's lost on no one, of course, she's talking about Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
  • Klobuchar, who has so far qualified for all of the primary debates but continues to see single-digit polling numbers, is in danger of missing the November debate stage.
  • With less than a month to qualify, a fresh sense of urgency surrounded her candidacy as her green campaign bus rumbled across Iowa on a visit this past weekend. Her itinerary was shaped by a swath of counties President Donald Trump turned red in 2016 that President Barack Obama twice carried.
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  • "Who do you want heading that ticket? Someone who can really win in the Midwest," Klobuchar told CNN in an interview aboard her chartered bus, emblazoned with the slogan "Amy for America" in giant letters. "I'm the only one with the track record of actually winning red congressional districts time and time again and suburban purple districts."
  • "She has a very refreshing, common sense way about her that is very appealing," said Andy McKean, a longtime Iowa state legislator who left the Republican Party earlier this year in disgust. Now a Democrat, he endorsed Klobuchar, saying: "She's very practical, but she's very progressive."
  • Betsy Pilkington, a retired teacher from North English, Iowa, said she was so impressed by Klobuchar's most recent debate performance that she went online and made a small contribution. It was the biggest fundraising boomlet of Klobuchar's campaign, aides said, raising more than $1 million in the first 24 hours after the debate. (By comparison, Klobuchar raised a total $4.8 million from July to September.)
  • Klobuchar and Warren, who are colleagues in the Senate and competitors on the campaign trail, illustrate the tensions coursing through the Democratic Party and the lingering uncertainty over what type of candidate is the most electable.
  • "How is college going to be free? How is health care going to be free? How are we going to close down all private health insurance?" said Susan Strodtbeck, a retired teacher who saw Klobuchar at a town hall meeting in Davenport. "I'm sorry. We can't do that."
  • When she asked Klobuchar about "all that free stuff," the senator's face came alive as she joked that the only free offerings her campaign had were the chocolate chip cookies at the back of the room.
  • "I'm not at all likening them to Donald Trump, who's plainly lying all the time," she said. "But I'm saying that I think this calls for a time when we build trust with people, not by promising everything for free. I know that's appealing. I would love to have everything for free. You'd love to have everything for free, but I think people know that's not going to happen."
  • "There are independents and moderate Republicans -- maybe they didn't vote last time, but they're watching," Klobuchar said. "So we better make sure that the message we're sending out there is one that brings them in as well."
  • "He's a Republican and says she does a great job for him up there, you know?" Rasmussen said. "I hope she can get stronger and pull ahead."
liamhudgings

BBC - Travel - The glitzy European city going green - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...itzy-european-city-going-green

climate Monaco economics Policy

shared by liamhudgings on 14 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • It’s an unlikely spot for an organic fruit and vegetable garden, tucked away between soulless high-rise buildings that dot the most densely populated country in the world
  • But this 450 sq m sliver of land is where market gardener Jessica Sbaraglia toils away.
  • launched her urban agriculture business Terre de Monaco in 2016 and she now has five micro farms on Monaco’s rooftops, balconies and hidden plots of land.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • With 1,600 sq m of potagers (gardens) that have produced 5 tonnes of organic produce since 2016 and partnerships with chefs of Michelin-starred restaurants, Terre de Monaco is a local success story.
  • Monaco is mostly concrete; I didn’t think I’d find the room. I really needed to convince people.”
  • The country may be associated with glamour and excess – from hedonistic frolics on a superyacht to a flutter in the grand casinos – yet this corner of the Côte d’Azur is, surprisingly, emerging as a leader in environmental responsibility.
  • Everywhere I looked, there were sustainable ways of shuttling me from A to B that help to reduce my carbon footprint; whether it was a hybrid bus snaking along Monaco’s winding roads or a leisurely cruise on the solar powered “bus boat” that crosses Port Hercules every 20 minutes. 
  • , I also noticed the abundance of eateries offering local, organic produce, some highlighting meat-free menus.
  • The lavish hotels scattered throughout this jet setters’ paradise are also playing their part, with many boasting green certifications recognising their sustainability efforts.
  • he so-called “Temple of the Sea” has watched over the Mediterranean for more than a century, raising awareness for the protection of the world’s oceans since its founding in 1910 by Prince Albert I.
  • “You can’t shut down the economy of an entire country, so we try and balance it out, it’s about offset,” said Anderson, acknowledging the steady stream of gas-guzzling luxury wheels that share the streets with the principality’s free-floating electric cars. “
  • “But it needs to go further in striking a balance with the demands of tourism, because we’re not yet perfect.”
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