Preparing London for extreme weather

Not at all sure what the point of this survey is other than to establish that Londoners are concerned about climate change - and a self-selecting group of Londoners at that.  Sadly a waste of time

Not sure this survey is of much value in any of the future decisions to help London adapt to climate change ? 
I guess Sadiq Khan will say that the survey confirms most Londoners do support his actions, such as the ULEZ extension. 

Echoing others what a silly survey - question whilst most vehicles esp buses are still diesel powered how do you explain imposing 20 mph limits when these decrease significantly decrease engine efficiency? Now it’s clear the U.K. & London does not generate enough electricity so why not tackle that by building power stations, preferably nuclear, and upgrade the whole supply to either have on street charging or hydrogen service stations?

What a ridiculous survey! I was waiting to get to what actions need to be taken, but nothing - just whether we think something has to be done.

As a basic minimum we need to: retain our trees and green spaces; plant additional trees and green spaces; reduce motor traffic; reduce demolitions and new building; reduce dependence on fossil fuels for heating etc.

I'm no expert and I'm sure there are many more things that should be happening but we need a bit more guildance on this.

There is no climate emergency. There have been extreme weather events throughout history even before homo sapiens. The successful propaganda of climate change is an attempt to destroy Western Civilization by much of the nonwestern world. Adaptation is essential and is a success.

Your email stated "Extreme weather events such as wildfires and flooding have been all over the news this summer. " The implication being that wildfires are due to climate change. It is well documented, if under-reported by our biased media, that the wildfires have been overwhelmingly caused through arson. Stop fear-mongering and misinforming.

I appreciate all the mayor is doing to curb emissions. I despair of National government who are backing down from all the commitments that had been made and seem to just make decisions based on their short term interests and personal profit. I am very unhappy about Lutfur Rahman's pro car policy and the sly way he is trying to reverse the LTN that are already in place.

Banning paving over front gardens  and is clearly

As an individual it feels like I am powerless to influence the above so I am doing what I can by volunteering on various green community projects which are seeking to increase biodiversity and access to green spaces. We have installed rain gardens and a large pond among other things.

I totally agree that we have to focus on restablishing water run off by banning paving over front gardens, reducing tarmac, concrete and installing porous paths, pavements etc, especially around trees. The  Parks have begun to make their green space management more eco friendly but as has been pointed out below could much further. 

Air con comes with a heavy price - businesses should be heavily taxed for using it.

I live outside a school with no idling signs- but there are always engines idling. How to get this message across??

During the Cold War this country maintained a group of volunteers in organisations  called the Civil Defence and the Auxiliary Fire Service. I feel that a similar organisation should be considered to tackle and or supplement existing organisations such as the Fire Brigade, Ambulance  service, Coast Guard  etc. to underpin and assist the existing organisations during periods of disaster.

This is a waste of public money.  Weather paterns are always in flux.  The human impact on the earths climate is minimal so please do not re-lable the damage to our environment and ecosystems due to human activities like over building [housing and road] over farming and industrialisation to be that due to ''climate change".  Of course earths climate is changing and it has been changing for the past millions and trillions of years without any help of humans.  Please focus on how to manage and mitigate environmental damage rather than scare monger.  Also please put in perspective.  CO2 is a tiny percentage of the green house gases.  95% is water vapour and humans have little or no control over volcanic errutions which have massive impact on the composition of the atmosphere.  Neither can humans impact the performance of the sun.

I'm sick of the blame being dumped on car users in London without action being taken on the increased use of incinerators within the M25, increased flights out of City Airport crop-dusting London ever take-off, untethered cruise ships morring on the Thames, Cloud seeding etc etc.  If you wanted cleaner air over London one simple step would be to have planes take off towards Thamesmead NOT over London - takeoff uses more fule hence creates more pollutants.  And why even consider building the Silvertown link before the Lower Thames Crossing is built - decreasing traffic across the Dartford Crossing would reduce traffic on the A2, A20 and Blackwall tunnel.  Knocking down old council estates eg Thamesmead, to build a new gentrified village also creates concrete pollution "Cement production alone generates around 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year—about 8% of the global total" Science Museum website

I think we need to talk more about prevention, we are still the centre of most of the money in Europe at the end of the day.

London (and the UK in general) hasn't been hit as hard as other countries at this stage, but there is a lot to be done. 

Currently most buildings have a terrible efficiency rating. Office blocks are maxing out the AC. We still have significant traffic every day.

Some of the actions taken with the ULEZ are needed, but they disproportionately affect individuals that do required work. Make the fine proportionate to net worth. Change the infrastructure to be more bike friendly. Make a unified effort across the boroughs for more public transportation that does not require to go through the centre.

On that, we need to follow the lead set by Paris and Amsterdam. It's obviously more difficult because of the scale of London, but it is needed.

As a user of the Victoria "sweatbox" Line, I wonder whether Transport for London is doing anything to resolve the problem.  The trains and station tunnels on that line are hot, regardless of weather.

The key to tackling this issue sensibly is for the Mayor and local authorities to stop catastrophising about global climate change and demonising carbon dioxide, which  the UK, let alone London on its own, can do nothing about while (for example) China is building scores of new coal fired power stations every year. Instead they need to look at practical measures to mitigate the effects of extreme weather (and we have always had occasional extreme weather events).

Some practical measures which might help:

ban basement conversions/extensions and ban paving over front gardens for parking, which reduce the ability for rainwater to soak away

clear drains properly

plant shade trees where practical

If the council's cleaned and maintained the drains flooding would be much reduced . The money is taken but the maintainece is never done . Not for 15 to 18 years .  Groves or Sq south side , Hyde park corner south end . The drains are non existent . Then you blame climate change .

We have caused many of the issues London has due to extensive paving, removal of planting, love of car transport, badly insulated buildings and complex processes to in theory encourage people to take action.

I agree with chessinguk on the many things outlined and would like to see:

Flooding - rain torrents: Maybe we have more extreme rain now, but the floods are caused in the main due to lack of drainage due to paving, tarmac, sewers linked to runoff drains. Pavements need rain gardens / drainage built into them (or use porus materials), park paths should all be porus, car parks should use porus materials, limits on how much people can pave their gardens (we have a number of fully paved front and back gardens around us). New builds / extensions / replacements should manage their runoff on site. Rain water capture for toilet flushing. 

Reduce sewage needs with grey water capture for new or replacement builds.

Insulate and add solar etc. It is too costly and complicated for many people to access grants. Councils should have teams of people directly working for them to insulate poorer housing whilst adding solar panels / heat pumps. Allow wealthier home owners to pay councils direct for this.

Campaign to get people planting again. The best carbon capture and cooling are from plants. Gardens are key. Control the costs of having a garden by increasing knowledge of composting and organic growing. Give composters away.

More tree and hedge planting along streets on verges and in parks.

More education on how you as an individual can help, how you keep your home cool, how you reduce fuel usage, stop idiling your car etc.

Boroughs to stop using petrol power ineffective tools such as leaf blowers. Park management to change to reduce fossil fuel burning such as leaving leaves to decompose, naturalised borders and verges, more hedges etc.

Ask businesses, schools, collages etc. what actions they are going to take to green up their areas, reduce runoff and reduce fossil fuel burning.

I honestly couldn’t put it better than the previous answer (talk_london_us…) but I would add:

as mentioned by someone else here- idling engines- please tackle this issue through education of motorists and enforcement when ignored. 

Educate the younger generations as their future is going to be significantly impacted by this. Visit schools- ask them what they hope to see happening in their communities to protect their interests. Make them involved and invested in making a difference. 

Of course these are only small steps and all the while we have billionaires whizzing about in private jets, many of us feel resigned to the fact that our personal contributions don’t mean anything- but it’s better than nothing and cultivates a better local society at the very least. 

You can't fight climate change with AirCon. The amount of energy needed to fuel every AirCon on homes and businesses has already reached an outrageous level. Not mentioning the HFC gases that are worse for greenhouse effect than CO2

Having construction for better insulation, more appropriate heating methods and better water management were all good ideas, but I see it as putting more pressure on an already struggling industry.

More green areas. Encourage public transport use. Get supermarkets to place their refrigerated areas more insulated. Get shops to NOT put their A/C blasting full power on the entrances, where cold quickly escapes into the street on summer, and hot air escapes in winter. This last one just confuses me.

Weather is changeable we just need to accept that not spend millions of pounds on employees to tell us it’s hot