No the fact that the word “Isolation” is missing from the title is not a mistake. Today was the day I had to venture in to the brave new world.
All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.
Aldous Huxley
I had to have my signature verified by a notary. He came out with a mask when I arrived in a car park. His intention was to work through the passenger window in the car. NO! My car is a clean room – only I enter it and even then only after I clean up. Goods only enter my boot, never the passenger compartment.
So I made him work from the passenger side of the bonnet with me on the driver side.
Stopping at another shop an elderly gent who had trouble walking saw me pull up and walked up to my door to talk to me. No social distancing (even though I guessed he would be in the sheltering group). He was obviously struggling – he wanted normal and he was over compensating by getting closer than he normally would. I let him talk through a closed window. After he was done he walked over to somebody else on the street to do the same again. To be honest he was not a pleasant person to listen to.
And here we have a problem. If my coffee shop decides it need to use 1m spacing to make money it will lose my custom, because I choose 2m spacing.
At the moment, if you look at our published statistics, you will see we have had around 300,000 confirmed cases and 43,000 deaths. That suggests 14% of people with the disease die – those numbers do not stack up. Thanks to the ONS study we know the numbers are wrong. There have actually been over 3.5 million people infected – suggesting only around 1% of people that catch the disease die. But think about that – we have only picked up 1 in 10 cases.
You looked at the report that says there are only 33,000 cases in the UK at present – check the footnotes. This excludes hospitals, care homes, prisons etc. This is not over.
One of the numbers that might be a surprise is that 95% of the cases in the world have occurred in cities.
Tonight the SDG is number 11 “Sustainable cities and communities”. The goal is actually to “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”.
This goal is about how we design our cities. Personally I believe that the larger the city the more steps we need to take to make them sustainable. The targets are:
- By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums
- By 2030, provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older persons
- By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries
- Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage
- By 2030, significantly reduce the number of deaths and the number of people affected and substantially decrease the direct economic losses relative to global gross domestic product caused by disasters, including water-related disasters, with a focus on protecting the poor and people in vulnerable situations
- By 2030, reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality and municipal and other waste management
- By 2030, provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities
- Support positive economic, social and environmental links between urban, peri-urban and rural areas by strengthening national and regional development planning
- By 2020, substantially increase the number of cities and human settlements adopting and implementing integrated policies and plans towards inclusion, resource efficiency, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, resilience to disasters, and develop and implement, in line with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, holistic disaster risk management at all levels
- Support least developed countries, including through financial and technical assistance, in building sustainable and resilient buildings utilizing local materials
There are still a billion people living in slums (a quarter of all city dwellers), although as a percentage of the urban population this has halved in the last 25 years. What this means is we are doing just about enough to stay still.
We need to improve our cities. Levels of pollution are too high. With the current problems with public transport this can only get worse unless we choose alternative transport.
I have always disliked electric vehicles being called the answer to carbon emissions – because they are not. But the one thing they are is an emission mover – instead of emissions in cities we can move them to the electric generating plants. A more likely carbon reduction strategy will be modern fuels, but that will not solve the city problem. The idea of having inner cities with electric only vehicles can seem to be a good answer – of course that means we only allow the expensive electric cars in to the posh parts of cities – the poor people that can’t afford the latest Tesla (or a new car of any kind) will be excluded.
It isn’t an easy answer, but using foot, bike or public transport is something we can do that will make a difference. Estimates for the UK are that we kill around 25,000 a year from air pollution – this has been dropping over the last 25 years (it has dropped by a third). As a country we have been doing better than many.
To date we are recording around 500,000 deaths from COVID-19 – but air pollution is estimated to kill more than 3 million people in the world each and every year. Maybe Greta had a point, are we still listening to her?