As we gear up for the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, it is fair to ask: how optimistic can one reasonably be concerning our ability at this critical juncture to meet the enormous challenges facing our planet , and our sector of responsibility, in time to make the needed big adjustments needed to make the necessary differences in the years immediately ahead? We weren't even close in 1996. Will we be ready . . . this time?
Sustainable Transportation's Dirty Secret - 1996
Sometimes it can help to recall the past. Listen for example to this one minute extract from a presentation given by the editor of this journal, at the time a consultant to the OECD Environment Directorate's "EST – Environmentally Sustainable Transport" project, to a post conference evaluation session of the OECD senior project team on the occasion of a peer review of the accomplishments of the high level March 1996 Vancouver Conference, "Towards Sustainable Transportation".
That meeting, in the words of the OECD post-meeting announcement, "brought together over four hundred policy-makers, governments and NGO representatives to assess the state of the art knowledge in reducing transport's environmental impacts and to chart a path towards more environmentally sustainable transport systems". And what exactly did those " four hundred policy-makers, governments and NGO representatives" actually achieve, sustainable transportation-wise?
* Click here for the "Sustainable Transportation's Dirty Secret" comment from 1996 
That, in a few words, is Sustainable Transportation's Dirty Secret. Worse yet, the sad truth is it does appear to be not just a transient anomaly but rather a sign of our times, of our generation, of our egregious (un)willingness to commit ourselves and get around to doing (a lot) better.
What have we done, learned since 1996?
Checking out the actual results for our sector's performance over these last thirteen years, as charted by leading edge of the research community, the many related web sites and all the conferences on global warming, carbon dioxide build-up, ozone depletion, and the rest, one comes to a pretty simple, absolutely terrifying conclusion.
From an unbiased eco-perspective we are continuing to misbehave very badly indeed. And what is worse yet is that, rhetoric aside, there is little out there on the radar screen of transport policy and practice that promises much better. Indeed the numbers all suggest that things are going from bad to worse. Emissions targets are being timidly set, after a huge amount of hemming and hawing. And then flagrantly missed. What a bad, what an inexcusable, what a tragic joke!
Looking ahead to Copenhagen, what does this mean? If we bear in mind that that high level 1996 international meeting entitled "Towards Sustainable Transportation" might as well not have been convened at all. At least as far as what has actually been accomplished on their self-assigned mandate over all these intervening years. We have not only not moved "towards sustainable transportation", to the contrary we have moved away from it, systemically and rapidly.
So I ask you, what are the differences between the way we are looking at all this today, and back in 1996? Have we made any notable progress over these thirteen long years? It is important to understand this.
So far, so bad. But let's not satisfy ourselves with whipping the dead horse of the past. Let's look ahead.
So what exactly do we need to do now to kick-start the system? (The system, incidentally being us.) Are we doomed to continue as "a generation of great talkers" and nothing more?
COP15 and the New Mobility Agenda
Will COP15 be any different when it comes to defining the future policy framework for what happens in the transport sector?
It could be, even at this late date.
This modest daily collaborative journal on the web -- "Insights and contributions from leading thinkers and practitioners around the world" -- which looks only at these issues but with the inputs and counsel of thousands of readers and colleagues around the world who really are able to help orient those coming to Copenhagen -- all this expertise needs to be energized, brought into the preparations and understood as a critical part of the solution, if solution there is to be.
You and I, dear readers, need to come together put our heads and hearts together on this. What is not needed is more high rhetoric or running away from the real challenges faced if we are to turn our sector around in order to meet the pressing time targets which are now clearly before us.
We know that what is needed are far more thoughtful, more innovative, more layered ("packages of measures"), more open, more dynamic, more deeply committed, and more courageous approaches to the challenges of sustainability in a frankly non-sustainable world -- a world of people, habits and political arrangements that to all appearances are not yet quite ready to make the fundamental changes that are needed for the planet and in our daily lives.
We clearly need leadership -- and not only leadership by rhetoric, but leadership by example.
The New Mobility/Climate Emergency Project: Plan B for sustainable transport. Now!
* Click here for 5 minute introduction to Plan B - http://tinyurl.com/ws-nma-sum
* And here for intro to the World Streets strategy - http://tinyurl.com/ws-sum
Now is the time to really start to dig in on this. Look! We know what we have to do, we really do know how to achieve it, and there is no excuse not to start right now to do it. Let's put worldwide transportation systems reform into the top rank of the COP15 agenda. Now is the time to do this. No excuses!
What are you going to tell your grandchildren that you did when it was time for action to save their future? That you worried a lot? Come on now.
Your faithful editor
Eric Britton
PS. Here in closing is a remark and proposal I made to that meeting by way of activation and follow-up -- click here for the one minute audio file. It was a call for an aggressive transfer to leadership by more women. It was not well received. Check it out here to see why.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Sustainable transport on the road to COP15?
(We are a generation of great talkers.)
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IMHO we are not ready. Transport is not a party to CO2 talks. Local, regional, and national transport stakeholders – planners, mayors, transit operators, developers, walkers, bikers are only there if they are invited by their delegations or as part of a true blizzard of interesting side events. I was in Kyoto and others through Cop 6, then again Montreal and and Bali. I will be in Copenhagen just before the beginning for a meeting of a special study on CO2 and transport in 2050, (There will be an open side event Saturday Dec 5, followed by a reception with a jazz group known as “Lee Schipper and the Mitigators”.)
ReplyDeleteWhat was notable about Kyoto was the little guys from the car industry through the “Global Climax Coalition”, a solid contrarian group at the time of mostly America car and fuel companies. They were wearing “badges of convenience”, in that case the “International Chamber of Commerce.” They contributed nothing to the discussion, although a few were helpful at the various transport-related side events I had organized for the International Energy Agency. General Motors and Honda participated in one side event in the Hague (COP 6) with constructive comments, as did Volvo Bus.
At Bali, I co-organized with the International Transport Forum an SRO event on transport, but mostly focused on tailpipes. Local councilors and others who do have political power were there, but only as observers.
And IMHO, while transport is crucial to solving the problem because over the long run transport – Co2 has grown more than other major sources—CO2 is just NOT a driving factor to total transport costs, externalities, or even variable costs.
Have a look here at our latest report, focused on Latin America but suggesting a total reframing of the problem.
http://metrostudies.berkeley.edu/pubs/reports/Shipper-ConsidClimateChange-LatinAmer.pdf
Last year a major global NGO asked me to write a paper explaining how transport could be part of the CO2 process we call “Kyoto”, how the “North” could aid the “South”, etc.
Demurred. Shall “we” pay ”them” not to be like us? Do we have some magic low-CO2 technologies? Can CO2-related money (i.e., CDM) possibly add up to anywhere near the trillions that go into roads and expensive metros systems? Will small change undo what mayors, transport ministers and other authorities have been unable to do, namely break the lock of the car on development? I wish it were so.
So maybe we are not ready and should not have high expectations, particularly with the US still in its usual state of disarray and denial, in spite of what I would term positive leadership from our new White House and departments of Transport and Energy and the EPA.
Lee Schipper, Berkeley CA USA
Through work with the UK's cycling groups I've been looking at cycle carriage on off-peak rail services by groups going cycling for leisure (and perhaps sport).
ReplyDeleteRail is often seen as the 'fix' for dealing with the huge overload of roads infrastructure by the short periods of commuting to daytime work each day. It may well moves millions of people, with great efficiency
on trains, but in the examples I know best - from the UK We use tweice
as many trainsd for just a few hours per day, and they sit with lights and air conditioning on idle or rolling around empty for the rest of the time. Some trains can be 'reduced' from 12 to 4 coaches, but the latest UK government spec has 12 coach fixed formatio trains which will relace trains that can now be cut down to 4 coaches when demand is low and maintenance desirable.
Our cycles on trains informal feedback is revealing some interesting detail - the urban trains have to have more flexibility in internal design so that they can be used off-peak for other purposes - for example pallet-loaded light freight/parcels traffic from consolidation dispersal depots to city centre delivery/collection points, eliminating wasteful use of large vehicles on city streets at low capacity and speeds, as well a passengers with bikes, and accompanied articles - like
the 3-seater settee I carried down to London by train in 1977. One
Sunday a group reported 63% of passenger on the train they caught were with bikes - 12 cyclists and 7 other passengers on a train with 246 seats, over 4 carriages, and an official cycle space for just 2 bikes (up to 20 bikes have gone on this type of train without problems) The train weighed in at just under 180 Tons - or in effect dragging around nearly 10 tons of train per passenger. In days past the trains could be reduced to just 2 carriages and now we face a prospect of modern lightweight 400 ton 12-coach trains running off-peak with 20 passengers.
This is both a challenging conundrum and an example of the flawed way we work to require millions to travel at the same times every day. Some thoughts on breaking the lunacy of this situation?
Dave Holladay, Scotland
More important than talking is acting.
ReplyDeleteEconomic powers are dominant in the active fields encouraging the existing known technologies to be sustained.
There are two basic ways to change the direction of the inertia, either try to curb it by policy that enhance controlled economic slowdown, or tunnel the development to innovative new sustainable methods. May I suggest the idea of "Transportationet" – aspiration to harness communication and computer technologies to a new way of sustainable mobility. (http://www.transportationet.com).