London's recovery starts with you

I fully support these aims. I don't agree with others that 20 MPH zones increase pollution. What does pollute is the bad driving I see regularly with lots of unnecessary acceleration, tail-gating, speeding well over the limit and other aggressive driving. If drivers are unable to behave the punishment should be to permanently disqualify them.

Sharing with you some fairly easy ideas to implement 

1) catchy campaigns on food and waste reduction

2) Londonwide easy to understand recycling system

3)education on the importance of keeping London's private gardens as opposed to back garden development and paved over front gardens

4)car free areas round inner city schools

5) rubbish tax on takeaways that use unsustainable packaging

6) fines for littering and maybe a Keep London Tidy campaign 

7)London-wide statistics on food production (Bengalis in TH grow tones of food) to understand different communities use of private outdoor space  to encourage more urban horticulture

Would generally support this but what about those who live further out and cannot cycle? Id like to see an assessment of exactly WHO we are encouraging to cycle and what the benefits are. Is there evidence that those on the roads are all people who could and should cycle? E.g. is it a specific age group? Also what journeys are the most damaging? Is it professionals in the city cabbing around or general use of public transport. In the comms, be clearer about the specific challenge, why an intervention is necessary and how you will measure it. I can see the benefits right in the centre but for those of us in zone 4, it can become impractical. Also how will it impact small businesses in the centre?

Would also welcome more on recycling, composting and creating green spaces in central. 

Short term/medium term vision should include a massive campaign to bring compost/food waste bins to homes and offices and educate people on how to use them correctly. We should be looking at other models in various countries that have this incorporated into their recology programs and figure how to scale. This is a huge area of improvement that changes peoples' behaviours while having a direct impact on environmental outcomes, including the zero waste goal. If we can make it easier and more accessible for people to participate in this lifestyle change, including adding more jobs, we are doing an incredible part to address the green new deal. 

As much as it's nice to merely encourage people to cycle and walk more, part of the aim to get people traveling actively more should include de-incentivising driving - that means increasing fuel duty, charging more for parking, blocking rat runs, building more dutch roundabouts, closing off roads so that bikes and people can pass through but not cars, and no doubt other suggestions I haven't thought of.

Who could disagree? But it is simply nice wishful thinking without money, powers and cross-party political agreement for action. The uproar across the country, including London, because of the sudden large increase in cycle lanes and occasionally larger pedestrian areas will be nothing compared with even greater restrictions on the use of cars, especially petrol/diesel ones. With Mayoral/GLA elections in 2021 and London councils in 2022. Very few politicians are will want to upset local car users, especially with Covid. A strong and skilled education and communication campaign is needed to better inform and persuade more people to accept the need to reduce car use ASAP. The actual measures needed; reducing road space for cars, lowering speed limits, reducing parking space or increasing charges, increased road use taxes, especially on carbon bad vehicles, such as SUVs, will be necessary, but bitterly opposed by many. Politicians will dither and delay. Much more effort must be put in to improving and increasing public transport and making it relatively cheaper. BUT FIRST we must convince people that it is safe to use and is the responsible public thing to do.

Strongly support this. How about London becoming a Doughnut City?! A fantastic tool for transformation and others are using it already : https://www.kateraworth.com/2020/04/08/amsterdam-city-doughnut/

Car pollution needs to be reduced. Far more investment in needed in a network for charging electric cars - every lamp post? In the meantime the worst pollution is caused by the permanent traffic jams which seem to be deliberately caused in a misplaced effort to reduce the attractiveness of car travel.

I am absolutely in favour of the strongest and most robust effort possible to implement a Green New Deal.  It is commendable you are considering doing this and it needs to be translated into action, not words.  Transforming the city from a car-orientated city to more cycle, pedestrian and public transit is good; if there are cars and trucks, they need to be fully electric, and the electricity generation needs to come from clean renewable sources.  This means a lot for me personally, and I have been very active around the climate emergency; I was involved with XR protests and made an apocalyptic concept album last year, proceeds from which went to XR; find out more here -> https://davidbarrows.com/albums/the-species-that-knew-too-much/   The pandemic provides an opportunity for a radical transformation of the economy.  Government at every level needs to get on board with this and act faster and with more urgency than ever.  Thanks.

These proposals are necessary and sensible, although details need to be worked out, as suggested by many of the other comments. A citizens assembly would be a good way of involving the public in this. Also very important not to be swayed by entrenched vested interests with loud voices, such as car drivers, builders and others who wish to return to business as usual.

The ambition to achieve a zero waste city by 2050 is not sufficiently ambitious & doesn't adequately sustain migration towards a circular economy.  These policy initiatives are otherwise meaningless.

There is a poor understanding reflected in comments already submitted suggesting that improving facilities for light traffic, people, bikes, public transport & disabled/motability vehicles, along with service, commercial & utilities vehicles will be adversely impacted by strategic road improvements that reduce private car use. More needs to be done to explain how this need not be the case by an educational support unit.

My 88 year old, partially sighted mother, refuses to swap her wheelchair for a bicycle. I have yet to see a 3 piece suite being delivered on a bicycle, nor a plumber with a boiler on the tube. How many deliveries by bicycle  would be needed to replenish the shelves of any supermarket?

Not everyone has a shower to use when they arrive at work, either hot and sweaty or cold and wet. 

10,000 years ago, it was possible to walk from what is now London to what is now Copenhagen or Paris. Then the icecaps melted. Nothing to do with man. This myth of 'man-made climate change' is an excuse to extort more tax from us for "green policies."

If you really believe that man is responsible for climate change, consume less and do not have children.

Reduce speed limits on all roads. Broaden congestion charge area. Vastly Increase number of electric car charging points. Don't build on green spaces only brownfield. Increase number of trees planted and consider making new parks and making existing ones bigger. Don't build over station car parks so less cars go into the centre or spend time driving around looking for street parking. 

In principle I favour this initiative, but it has to be reasonable and not radical for the majority of the general public to accept it, which is the only way it will have a chance of succeeding.  You confuse the issue at hand by mentioning tackling the climate emergency in the mission statement.  I fully accept and encompass that climate change is happening, bet there is relatively little that human beings and society organisations can do to change this - all we can do is to make efforts to mitigate the change as far as we can.

'Zero waste' by any date whatsoever is a meaningless statement, as it is totally by nature that all living things - animals, plants and microbes - produce waste of some kind and every process of existing, living and working produces waste of some kind - no process whatsoever is 100% efficient, nor ever will be, simply by the laws of physics and chemistry.

Increased green environment and lower carbon footprint are excellent initiatives, as also are investment in jobs and renewable energy. However, being realistic, expecting people - both in London and across the world - to give up cars and take to bicycles and public transport is as absurd as expecting people to give up their mobile phones, social media, music, using computers, or going on holidays. Far more sensible to acommodate cars into our city and communities in a more social and green way, particularly as the population is ageing and increasing numbers cannot ride cycles or walk to do what they need to, especially as public transport will be too dangerous for many in the future, at least for the next few years. You have done virtually nothing to make the London underground Covid-safe.