What life will be like under climate lockdowns

March 1, 2025

They’re about to completely change our way of life – and most people don’t even realise.

Climate lockdowns are coming. This has already been decided outside democracy at a higher level.

And unless there’s a major change in current power structures, it’s happening whether the public like it or not.

While the term “climate lockdown” is useful shorthand, there are important differences from the lockdowns imposed during the Covid era.

Moving around won’t technically be banned; they’re just going to make it much more expensive, stressful and impractical.

Most importantly, the war on motorists will be ramped up massively – with new charges, red tape and restrictions. The kind of draconian measures seen in London will be rolled out to other cities, and then expanded to towns, perhaps even large villages.

There’s already a big campaign to condition the public to pay-per-mile road charging. This will most likely be added on top of road tax and fuel duty, plus ULEZ-style tolls for entering cities.

The system will be fiendishly complex by design. They want to make drivers fearful of huge fines if they stray into the wrong zone or make a minor mistake, to put them off travelling full stop.

Some councils are planning to force drivers to obtain permits to enter areas of cities or travel down certain routes. Personal carbon allowances are also being discussed (to be reduced in size over time).

There’ll be even more street closures, obstacles, traffic lights, and other reductions in road capacity – all intended to create artificial delays and “nudge” people out of their vehicles. The kind of measures imposed in so-called low traffic neighbourhoods will be scaled up.

Mass surveillance infrastructure is being installed to facilitate these controls. Alarmingly, this will allow the authorities to ban dissidents and non-compliers from travelling to certain locations.

During a future pandemic, they could use the system to stop unvaccinated individuals travelling outside their immediate locality.

As well as tracking and controlling the public, the main objective is a big reduction in car ownership, and for the remaining drivers to travel far less. The plan is for much of the population to be increasingly limited to 15-minute cities (more details here).

In practice this will mean less choice in employment, business, shopping and leisure activities. It will also breed social isolation by making it much harder to visit friends and relatives outside your own area. The impact on the elderly and infirm will be particularly serious. Denied the convenience of door-to-door car travel, more and more people will stay at home waiting for items to be delivered.

Holidays abroad will also become a thing of the past, at least for lower-to-middle income groups. Perhaps they’ll have to sell their carbon allowance to rich people as energy bills and other basic living costs continue to rise. In any case, new anti-tourist taxes and regulations will increasingly make overseas travel prohibitively expensive.

Anti-tourist protests are already being instigated and amplified in order to condition the public ready for the coming crackdown.

The aviation sector, while still a target, is likely to be treated with a relatively light touch however. This is because air travel is critical to many agendas of the transnational “elite”, such as deeper economic, social and political integration across borders.

Accordingly, the focus will be on anti-tourism measures imposed at local level, such as new taxes and restrictions on the supply of accommodation. Tourist-dependent regions will be sold these policies with promises of moving upmarket, as richer long-haul travellers are forced to holiday closer to home by inflated costs.

Finally, it’s worth discussing how governments are going to try to hoodwink the public that they’re not really undermining people’s mobility. They’ll claim it’s still easy to move around using “greener” alternatives, such as trains and buses. (The EU is even promoting the idea that time-consuming and expensive sleeper trains can replace flights).

In reality trains and buses are only practical and viable in areas and corridors with relatively high population densities. In many locations it’s impossible for them to replace a large percentage of car journeys.

Taking the train (or bus) involves at least three stages. You have to travel to the station to catch it, leaving enough time for unforeseen delays, then make the train journey itself. At the other end you have to get from the station to your final destination.

In rural and suburban areas it’s typically far quicker to drive directly to your endpoint. It often takes nearly as long to get to the nearest station as it does to complete the whole journey by car. Moreover, there are huge swathes of the country that can’t be reached by bus or train – at least not in a reasonable time.

So, forcing people to ditch their cars and rely on trains and buses instead is effectively the same as massively reducing their mobility.    

First published on the Transport Watch blog.

Filed under environment, transport

How to turn London into Europe’s biggest city

March 1, 2025

Individuals should be given the freedom to fulfil their potential, rather than being trapped by government policies in towns and cities that hold them back. Having vast numbers of workers in the wrong place weakens the economy by reducing productivity and wealth creation.

In a free society, successful cities and regions can rapidly expand in population, while failing locations can rapidly decline. This process of geographical change is critical for rapid economic growth and big increases in living standards.

Cities in the North of England expanded rapidly during the industrial revolution – and this was vital for their development.

However, the reasons northern cities were centres of wealth creation in the 18th and 19th centuries no longer apply. These days, their economies are largely dependent on government handouts in various forms.

Their predicament is amplified by their location – on the edge of a continent in rapid relative economic decline. High labour, energy and transport costs – and suffocating bureaucracy and red tape – also create a difficult environment for business to prosper.

However, the UK’s geographical disadvantages can be counteracted by exploiting the agglomeration benefits of a very large city. In other words, the “economies of scale” created by a huge conurbation can help to overcome the problems associated with a semi-peripheral location.

Mega cities promote clusters of expertise and innovation. A high degree of specialisation is possible, with a wide range of niche services.  Deep and complex labour markets allow better matching of jobs to skills and talents, which in turn attracts the skilful and talented.

Specialist high-end services combined with high “human capital” attract entrepreneurs and investors from around the world. Providing certain conditions are met – i.e. reasonable tax rates, light-touch regulation and relative political stability – a very large city can create a virtuous economic circle, leading to high levels of productivity and high living standards.  

London should therefore be allowed to grow as large as possible. With state-imposed constraints removed, it could conceivably become the largest city inside Europe.

The administrative area of Greater London currently has a population of around 9 million. The Greater London Built-Up Area, which constitutes the continuous, joined-up conurbation, has around 10 million people. And the wider “London Metropolitan Area” is estimated at approximately 15 million.

In the absence of state-imposed restrictions, these figures (for the sake of illustration) could perhaps grow to 12 million, 15 million and 22 million respectively. However, there should not be fixed population targets or timescales. The outcome should be the result of the voluntary choices made by individuals.  

The main policy change required is liberalisation of the planning system and building regulations. Development should be allowed in London’s green belt. Property owners should also be allowed to “densify” existing neighbourhoods with the minimum of red tape – by building on gardens, adding floors, converting houses into flats, and so on. Under-used land such as parks, playing fields and warehouses could be developed too. A dramatic increase in supply would of course put powerful downward pressure on rents and house prices.

Inadequate transport infrastructure is no longer such a major constraint on the capital’s growth. The shift to working from home (often part-time) means London can accommodate a far bigger population without putting undue pressure on its public transport system (for example by spreading the peaks). And road capacity can quickly be increased by removing various anti-car measures imposed over the last few years (such as barely used cycle and bus lanes etc.).

Furthermore, where appropriate, the capacity of rail corridors could be increased enormously by converting them into busways, which allow higher passenger flows at far lower cost than railways (meaning reduced fares and commercially viable, subsidy-free services).

Water supplies are also frequently cited as a constraint. But a short Severn-Thames link and expanded reservoirs – perhaps combined with desalination plants if absolutely necessary – would resolve this issue.

Of course there should not be state-imposed constraints on the growth of northern cities either. But the chances of say Manchester evolving into a ten-million-plus mega city are slim. London has a first-mover advantage, inertia, a better location closer to Europe’s “core” and already possesses much of the required infrastructure.

First published on the Transport Watch blog.

Filed under political economy, regulation, transport