Nimrod103 wrote:TUK020 wrote:And insulating old housing stock is the easy win from a CO2 global warming perspective - far less damaging from an economic perspective than trying to stop flying etc etc.
Seeing as almost certainly within 20 years, space heating with fossil fuels will be history, the CO2 argument is rather irrelevant. And super-insulating old houses with solid walls is quite difficult, not to mention problems with insulating listed buildings.
I don't think we should be encouraging people to sit at home in their centrally heated boxes. When they go out, they will more likely want to travel in their heated cars, but the Govt wants people to travel on non heated bicycles.
1. I've insulated my 120-year old terraced house (very typical of much of UK old housing stock) to near-passivhaus levels for trivial cost, just a bit of thought & effort. It can be done.
2. I'm working through insulating a solid (etc) wall grade II listed humongous pile for my girlfriend (very typical of the ancient piles) , to very good effect. It can be done.
- in both cases it can be done. If you care to make it happen. But first you have to care.
3. Space heating with fossil fuels will in time become history. However a) we will get there faster if we insulate; b) if we insulate there is no need to overbuild renewables generation (which is a financial cost and a CO2 cost to build) to compensate for bad buildings; c) there is still a energy cost issue which drives fuel poverty, even if the energy is renewables; d) there are damp & draught issues which drive bad health outcomes, and done correctly insulation assists with them - both are very much a problem in the cold driving windy rains of the UK.
4. Exercise is a completely separate matter. So too is transport. Don't try to shift the argument to irrelevancies.
5. If you want to pretend the problem doesn't exist, and prefer the poor people to all die unhealthy & young, provided they don't cost your tax $$, then just say so. I am sure we could house the poor in wire cages with no roof and let them all die of pneumonia at 40 or earlier. But we don't.
dspp