[sustran] Our Ten Cents on a Ten Million Dollar Study

[eric.britton at ecoplan.org]

Apropos of the latest comments on this of our good friends at the ITDP, I'd
like to add a penny's worth of perception:

Much as I hate to seem like  knee-jerk critic on this, but is it not with
bearing in mind that the International Energy Agency and the US Department
of Energy have been unswerving apologists for the automotive industry
broadly defined for several decades now, and that while governments and
administrations may come and go their basic agenda is largely unchanged?
Head off "disaster" (from their point of view of course).

By this I do not mean to denigrate either the reality that cleaner and more
efficient engines, better recycling via design and productive technology,
and cleaner fuels are indeed having at least a first round of positive
impact on the environment in certain situations and in a number of ways, but
when we factor in the rebound effect which ineluctably works to push up the
total numbers of vehicles out there on the road, thereby canceling out most
if not all of the targeted improvements.  Likewise, we are seeing
considerable progress at the rhetorical level - see Mobility 2001 for the
latest on this - but the bottom line remains.

Which means of course that the lead or perceptual leap has not, and in all
probability will not, come from those quarters.  So while one nonetheless
does duly read what they put out, spot the slow shifts in underlying
attitudes and language, but at the end of the day I am afraid that we gotta
look elsewhere if we are to sort out the problems of sustainability and
social justice, which at the end of the day must be our uncompromising
bottom line.

Eric Britton

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