{"id":264689,"date":"2023-06-30T14:20:19","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T12:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=264689"},"modified":"2023-06-30T14:20:22","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T12:20:22","slug":"the-nihilism-of-net-zero-is-killing-our-cities-and-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=264689","title":{"rendered":"The Nihilism of Net Zero is Killing Our Cities and Streets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0J SOREL<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For Augustus Pugin<\/a>, the Gothic Revival in architecture \u2013 which he did much to unleash \u2013 had a very special and specific purpose. Pointed arches and gabled roofs were not just a design choice, but were riven with moral meaning. To Pugin, the neo-classical style of the previous century was to be despised above all else: its clean lines, and its clean facades, seemed to insist that the universe was rational and comprehensible to the human mind. To the brooding young Pugin, this was anathema. From Doric columns it was only a hop, step and a jump to the French Revolution and the Cult of the Supreme Being. The solution to secular hubris was to rebuild Britain in a confusion of gargoyles, tracery and flying buttresses; all of this would serve to re-enchant national life, and inspire a trembling awe for the universe and its mysteries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new bollard sitting areas, plonked in some of Britain\u2019s main thoroughfares, proceed from a similar ethos. The first thing to note is that they are being raised in conscious defiance of something else. The new sitting area in\u00a0Oxford\u2019s Broad Street<\/a>\u00a0isn\u2019t a paved-over section of its own, but is instead grafted straight onto the tarmac itself \u2013 this is not an attempt to build something, but to deface something else. You will notice also that there are hardly any benches, and those that do exist are indistinguishable from the bollards themselves. The purpose of this place isn\u2019t for people to sit, but simply to obstruct the street for a moral purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As with the Gothic style, the structure certainly doesn\u2019t lack for ornament. The wooden bollards are irregular in shape and irregularly placed, forming a jagged line. Skin disease-like patches of solid yellow are strewn about the ground. The structure is further encrusted with a thicket of dry and scratchy plants, and a rats\u2019 nest of bicycles. Whatever this is, it certainly does not obey the old modernist dictum that form should follow function. There is little of Le Corbusier to be found here, or even Norman Foster \u2013 New Labour\u2019s court architect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If these places have a moral purpose, then what is it? They are meant as a rebuke to apparent hubris; they declare that humans should not, or cannot, shape the world around them. Somehow, nature will always have its due \u2013 the weeds will always creep in, reclaiming all our achievements and bringing them low. It\u2019s a kind of peevish version of the Babel myth. This is increasingly the tenor of British architecture, which insists on weighing down anything that may inch towards monumentalism or grandeur with haphazard clumps of grass and bramble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But look at it this way. As a moral statement, it is an essentially despairing one. The architects of Oxford as a 15-minute city are not offering an alternative to modern industrial life, or even to car-centric life. No new system of trams or buses has been forthcoming, never mind a return to some kind of agrarian living. Instead, Net Zero architecture is content to nibble at the edges of modern life. Hating cars and the people who drive them, but unable to conceive of anything else, Oxford City Council can only petulantly obstruct by scattering objects in the way \u2013 almost literally a case of toys thrown out of the pram. A street isn\u2019t a blank canvas; it is there to be used. To simply make a street worse and less functional, rather than abolishing it and building something else, is only demented.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entire project of Net Zero follows a similar logic. Its predictions are cataclysmic, but its solutions are not. It doesn\u2019t see a transformation of industrial society, only a gradual and forced winding down of living standards. It doesn\u2019t offer a new way of life, but makes life harder for superstitious reasons. Net Zero proposes that just enough of industrial society be kept around in order to sustain the bureaucracy which is to carry this out.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By strangling one of the city\u2019s main arteries, what the council declares is that Oxford \u2013 which by all economic logic should be Britain\u2019s second city \u2013 is, in fact, a theme park. A Hogwarts theme park for tourists, kept in aspic as a medieval parody of itself. As Oxford is transformed from a scientific and industrial centre into a historical curiosity, the city will \u2013 I suspect \u2013 lose much of its charm. But this is likely to be lost on the planners themselves, who despair of urban life, and can only imagine city living as a collection of sham villages. We end up with all the mysticism of Pugin, but with none of the vision. Britain\u2019s towns and cities are in the midst of another Gothic Revival \u2013 only this time without any buildings. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new bollard sitting areas, plonked in some of Britain\u2019s main thoroughfares, proceed from a similar ethos. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":264697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691820650,691819134,691818154,691820649],"class_list":{"0":"post-264689","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-architecture","9":"tag-climate-alarmism","10":"tag-net-zero","11":"tag-oxford","13":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/0177b131d1770775330bf645e61b2974e.jpg?fit=1600%2C1036&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-16Rb","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":258701,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=258701","url_meta":{"origin":264689,"position":0},"title":"Europe 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