Small steps

Copenhagen is approaching, and we are being bombarded with ever-rising reduction targets for CO2 emissions: 25 to forty per cent less emissions by 2020, and up to ninety per cent less by 2050. This resembles the forgotten OECD Environmentally Sustainable Transport (EST) scenario – could we have been right as early as 1995 after all? It’s a pity that the media steadfastly fail to state which year is to serve as the reference point.

With lots of pomp and circumstance, myriad governments and companies are all promising to purchase hordes of electric cars. Hundreds of millions are being spent on technological innovations, despite the fact that the majority of these will not be able to reduce CO2 emissions for several decades yet.

The targets for 2020 will need to be reached almost entirely through energy savings using existing technologies and within current consumption and mobility patterns. These patterns themselves will even need to change: consumoderation and transport reduction! No magic solutions will be available by 2020, only lots of small and very practical steps such as modal shift, eco-driving, road pricing, downsizing, speed control and more efficient traffic management.

'Flucht nacht vorn pushes less popular measures aside'
And that’s where the problem lies, given that politicians and engineers mostly opt for long-term, fancy high-tech solutions. The anticipated environmental benefits of these solutions are grossly exaggerated, giving the media and the public the impression that everything will be fine in the end. This ‘flight forwards’ causes the less popular measures (which actually do have an effect in the short term) to be painstakingly avoided and left out of the picture, sometimes even by the environmental movement. In this way, all kinds of steps that would lead to emission reductions in the here-and-now, and which also have a positive effect on air quality and noise pollution, are left by the wayside.

My recent trip through eastern Europe, where car travel and driving behaviour are still in the adolescent stages, was particularly eye-opening. For example, the average eastern-European motorist (with years of driving practice in a low-powered Lada or Trabant) only knows one position: foot to the floor. Such behaviour has disastrous consequences in modern

over-powered cars; my own trip through Poland almost ended five seconds behind a lethal head-on collision. Two Baltic states recently overtook Portugal and Greece at the head of the top ten road toll statistics. Fuel consumption and CO2 emissions are being firmly fostered by this kind of driving behaviour. If any place is in need of eco-driving, it’s eastern Europe!

The (poverty-stricken) governments in these countries are also responsible for additional CO2 emissions that could easily be avoided at low cost. Unfortunately, forty years of bureaucratic tradition is suffocating the 'praktische Vernunft' necessary to implement these many small changes.

'Trams and trains function as free automobile advertising'
Some examples from Poland: many traffic lights (red, most of the time) are controlled by simple timing mechanisms, so that thousands of cars and lorries are needlessly required to stop for long periods (and then accelerate again, which causes the most pollution) without any traffic going the other way.

Eastern Europe still has thousands of forsaken railway crossings where cars and trucks are obliged to stop (often due to the bumpy rails), even if there are trees growing between the disused tracks… And if there are still trains running – sadly becoming a rare phenomenon – huge traffic jams form at the barriers because they descend five minutes before the train’s arrival and remain lowered for minutes afterwards. Any advice for drivers to turn off their engines in a traffic jam is non-existent.

In the cities, many a gammy tram needs to move slowly just to stay on the bumpy rails.

Polish train stations are among the greyest and least customer-friendly that I know, ideally suited to horror movie scenery. They haven’t felt a paintbrush since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is not a word of English anywhere and no information boards on the platforms. In short: trams and trains function as free automobile advertising.

Many a mickle makes a muckle. Energy saving on the roads and reduction of CO2 emissions are no exception. Every kilogram of CO2 that can be avoided now is a win for 2020, and is indispensable for keeping global warming down to two degrees Celsius. The EU really ought to earmark a few million Euros for this purpose from the trans-European transport network (TEN-T) programme, which is currently pouring hundreds of millions into massive infrastructure projects in the wealthier member states. Every Euro that the EU invests in roads, rails and stations in eastern Europe will do more for the environment than those large-scale projects!