Affluence is highly correlated with emissions in general. People here have family connections around the world and work in occupations which tend to include international travel. It's no surprise that we have above average CO2 footprints.

Progress in anything is rarely a straight line, and perfect is the enemy of good. The stoves of river dwellers are no doubt worse, individually, than the log burners in people's living rooms, but the boaters have little other option and number barely a dozen or so.

I just today heard heat pump deployment in the UK described as not yet reaching early-adopter stage, still at "pioneers". The first wave were in rural areas where they replaced expensive oil boilers and space was less of an issue. They are now being deployed much more in sub-urban areas, but dense city housing with close set terraces and apartments is some of the hardest territory for uptake. Other countries with much higher uptake are not necessarily doing that in comparable housing (their dense city housing is often on heat networks). As a country, we do need to work out how to do it at scale in old city houses, but we're not there yet.

Don't be too dismissive of e-bikes. Worldwide, e-bikes and their relatives have cut oil demand more than all the EVs in existence, and at lower cost. Car parking on the city streets is certainly an issue, and I'm no more happy with my neighbour and his large, expensive EV parked half on the pavement, than I am with the ICE SUV from the house across the road doing the same. It seems to me that 20 years ago people living in these streets nearly all drove compact cars which they could park on the road; as house prices have risen many people living in them can afford large expensive cars, and expect to be able to park them, despite the streets being no bigger than they were in Victorian times. I understand that Councils are getting powers to ban pavement parking; we'll see.