Can we take a moment to give a big hand to the blade runners?
No, not the Harrison Ford type who retire replicants, I’m talking about that brave band of loyal Englishmen (and, I assume, women) who are, right now, fighting the good fight against the London Mayor’s perfidious Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) scheme, which sees Londoners driving older cars charged £12.50 a day for driving within London (electric vehicles and newer cars are currently exempt).
Like the rebels who followed Wat Tyler to London to press their claims in the Peasants’ Revolt, or Robin Hood’s Merry Men, these plucky souls are reclaiming their rights in the only way open to people whose governments are deaf to their concerns: with direct action.
Dressed in balaclavas and hoodies, armed with little more than wire cutters, screwdrivers, and canisters of spray paint, more than 100 blade runners are busy disabling and dismantling the ULEZ road cameras as fast as they’re being put up.
One of them, a dad in his 40s, told MailOnline: “We are going to take down every single one no matter what.” He had already removed 34 himself, with hundreds more having been dismantled by fellow blade runners.
“Snipping, damaging with hammers, painting, disabling on a circuit level and removing. They are unbolted and they are snipped. The tools they use to install them are the ones we use to remove it,” he said.
Already operating in central and inner London, ULEZ is due to be rolled out to the whole of Greater London by the end of the month, an area that covers 606 square miles and is home to nearly 9 million people. In preparation, the cameras have been going in — only to be promptly dismantled by local blade runners, sometimes within mere hours.
But why? What is it about the ULEZ scheme that has turned these formerly law-abiding folk into renegades?
“We don't want this,” the blade runner told the Mail. “It's a way to try to... restrict our movements. Fuck them. It will not happen because we haven’t done anything to deserve it. Everything we are doing is for our own freedoms. It’s the tip of the iceberg. We do not live in a democracy. We will fight with everything we have for our freedoms.”
According to the Mayor of London’s office, the scheme is designed to reduce air pollution. The official ULEZ page on the London Assembly website states: “Each year air pollution causes thousands of Londoners to die prematurely and develop life-changing illnesses like cancer, lung disease, dementia and asthma. That’s why we are taking action now.” It boasts of an “almost 50% reduction in toxic Nitrogen Dioxide pollution in central London,” and “over 1 million hospital admissions averted by 2050.”
But the blade runners aren’t buying it.
One told the Mail: “We do not have an air quality problem. Old white people who have never been involved are incensed to mess the place up. They want to rip the system down.”
They believe ULEZ is about something else.
“This is being done out of necessity because the tyrants that currently rule over us are taking the piss. We are only governed by consent. It’s about time we took back the power to the people.”
“People in this country have had enough,” said another. “If we just roll over, our lives are gone. There are millions like me who won't take this shit anymore. We will fight. Leave me the fuck alone, just let me get on with my life. I don’t want to be controlled.”
Clearly, people are extremely angry about the scheme. The blade runners aren’t the only ones: in the official consultation for the scheme, two thirds of respondents said they didn’t want it. So why is the London Mayor so determined to push it through against the will of the people?
Well, although you won’t find any mention of it on the London Assembly website, ULEZ is, in fact, a vital part of the Greater London Authority’s ambition to reach Net Zero by 2030.
Net Zero, A Definition
For those not familiar with the term, Net Zero simply means ensuring CO2 emissions are balanced out by CO2 capture or offsetting, so that no extra CO2 enters the atmosphere — net zero emissions. Advocates of the policy claim this will halt global warming in its tracks. The aim is to at least prevent the global average temperature from rising more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and preferably stop it from rising 1.5°C. Advocates say that the global average temperature has already risen by 1.3°C since the late 1700s, making the target an urgent one. According to the UN, “to limit global warming to 1.5°C, greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 at the latest and decline 43% by 2030.”
Net Zero could be achieved by capturing all the CO2 released, or by not releasing any in the first place. The latter is the favoured option, but in reality even the most ardent climate change advocates admit that it will not be possible to stop all CO2 emissions, so instead the policy aims to achieve this target through a combination of both reduction and capture.
The target was set at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, on 12 December 2015, with the signing, by 196 parties, of the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change.
How Does the Paris Agreement Work?
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