[sustran] Climate is the Portal to New Mobility - I

[Eric Britton]

Tomorrow's feature for World Streets - For you guiding coments and
suggestions

 

 

Message to the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009:

The climate agenda is getting high political and media attention worldwide,
and there are many important events scheduled for the months immediately
ahead. That is good. But in our view the agenda for sustainable transport
system reform at all levels is timid, incoherent and in large part
irrelevant given the real priorities. Well, what is relevant then? How can
we get the level of innovation and reform that is going to be critical in
the years immediately ahead?

 

"We have to reduce about 80% of our greenhouse gas emissions over the next
10 to 15 years."  

-       President William Jefferson Clinton, in announcing the Clinton
Climate Initiative in Los Angeles in August 2006

 

A dozen things we know for sure about transport and climate that we would
like to share with you in the run-up to Copenhagen:

1.      Public policy is catastrophically underperforming in terms of
technology and human impacts on climate, all sectors in.

2.      President Clinton was unquestionably right when three  years ago he
targeted: "80% GHG reductions . . . over the next 10 to 15 years".

3.      This level of aggressive response has however not been broadly
picked up by most of the agencies, institutions and interests concerned, the
great majority  of whom have tilted to a much longer, more leisurely, more
passive conversion strategy. (Keynes was never righter in his "in the long
run . . " statement than here.)

4.      That is an enormous strategic and moral  enormous error and now
needs to be corrected as a highest priority.

5.      The transport sector, all in, accounts for on the order of 20 +/- 5%
of greenhouse gas emissions

6.      Our sector has one very special characteristic that is not generally
appreciated, including by the experts -- and that is that of all the main
sectors it is the easiest in which to achieve very high impact, near term
results. 

7.      This being the case, we propose  that sustainable transport system
reform be taken a very high priority in the climate policy debate, since we
are well positioned to function as a sort of "learning system" for the rest.


8.      Our responsibility in our sector is in the immediate term, i.e.,
targeting and attaining significant (two digit) decreases in the two to four
years immediately ahead.

9.      The main instrument of transport system reform lies in the strategic
and radical reduction of motorized traffic (vehicle miles/kilometers
travelled). This is 100% unambiguous. There is no other path.

10.  Based on the results of the last years we are most demonstrably failing
in this mission. 

11.  However, we know exactly how to achieve this.

12.  Moreover these sharp and fast GHG reductions will serve us well on many
other scores as well (fossil fuel reductions, stronger economies, improved
mobility for all, health, life quality, economic renewal, more broadly
beneficial technology progress, etc. You know the list by heart.)

 

The trick is wise governance. The politics of transportation . And that is
where all of us here come in. Let us write a joint letter to Copenhagen and
all involved, and see if we can get a higher profile for the very short term
reforms that we know to be possible in our sector. And so necessary.

In a first instance kindly get in touch either via the Comment section that
follows just below or if you prefer in private to editor at worldstreets.org
We can then organize it as we have done with the 99 supporting statements
that have come in over the last two weeks, and make it broadly known. Our
first step to Copenhagen.

 

Will that work for you?

 

Eric Britton

 

 

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