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Road policy oil assumptions attacked
Dan Milmo, Guardian
The government's roads policy has been labelled "absurd" after it emerged that decisions on road building and pay-as-you-drive schemes over the next decade will based on an oil price of no more than $70 a barrel.

New traffic and congestion forecasts, which are integral to government road policies, are based on an oil price of $65 a barrel in 2010, rising to $68 a barrel in 2015 and $70 a barrel in 2020, the Department for Transport has revealed.

The DfT is using the projections from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform despite widespread concerns over a sustained spike in the global oil price, which nearly breached $130 a barrel on Tuesday.

"We are in the process of using these updated projections to make new road traffic and congestion forecasts," said Jim Fitzpatrick, transport minister. The admission came on the same day that the Sustainable Development Commission, a government green watchdog, called for a revision of national aviation policy due to doubts over the integrity of the environmental and economic data underpinning airport expansion plans.
(20 May 2008)

Put UK airport expansion on hold, demands green group
Dan Milmo and John Vidal, The Guardian
he government should completely rethink its aviation policy and shelve plans to expand Heathrow and Stansted airports, according to an influential advisory body.

The Sustainable Development Commission, chaired by Sir Jonathon Porritt, said there were big question marks over the environmental and economic arguments underpinning the proposals for British airport expansion. It warned that the government faced a wave of legal challenges if it did not hold an independent review of its 2003 aviation white paper, which sanctioned new runways at Heathrow, Stansted and other airports.
(21 May 2008)

Sinking feeling
John Vidal, The Guardian,
Why the erosion of Britain's peatlands, a natural reservoir for carbon, is making them a dangerous source of greenhouse gases
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... Peat is one of the most efficient natural reservoirs of carbon, and does not decompose in healthy, growing bogs because it lives in wet, airless, acidic conditions. Instead, peat bogs act as "sinks", which "fix" and store carbon from the atmosphere. However, if it is exposed and allowed to dry out and oxidise, it releases carbon dioxide - the main greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere.

Fred Worrall, a leading peat researcher at Durham University, says land-based carbon emissions are potentially as serious as emissions from cars and aviation
(21 May 2008)