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

[Dinesh Mohan]

Eric:

Agreed!

Dinesh Mohan

eric.britton at ecoplan.org wrote:

> 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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Dinesh Mohan
Henry Ford Professor for Biomechanics and Transportation Safety
Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme
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