Expanding bus services to attract more people to use them instead of their cars runs the risk of increasing our CO₂ emissions.  What?!  Surely that can’t be right!   Well….it depends.   Outside the rush-hour the occupancy rates on buses aren’t very good at all, and CO₂ emissions per passenger kilometre are only about 20% better than those for car occupants.  

Some people say the buses aren’t frequent enough, so perhaps it would be a good idea to double their frequency and see what would happen?   Bus patronage would very likely increase, but by how much?  And would the new passengers just be ones who would previously have gone by car, or would some be people who had previously walked, gone by cycle, or not made the journey at all?   And amongst those who switched from using the car to using the bus, would there be the same proportion of drivers of gas guzzlers, as you see on the road generally?  I rather doubt it.   I suspect that if we doubled the bus frequency and managed to double the patronage as a result, we would feel really pleased with ourselves.  However, the hard truth is that we would actually have had virtually no effect on CO₂ emissions at all….they might even have gone up a bit.  So, what’s the answer?  Let us know what you think.

Rejoice!  The number of people killed in road traffic accidents in 2007 in the UK has fallen by 7% to only 2,946.  That makes it about the same as the number killed on that fateful day in the US in September 2001, which caused the world to change for ever, a war in Iraq, and a war in Afghanistan.

The good news doesn’t end there.  There was a (slightly smaller) drop in the number of injuries – a mere 247,000, of which only 27,000 were serious.

Why are we so complacent about this?   After all, if we have a train crash that kills (only!) half a dozen people, the headlines are devoted to the news for days, the line is shut, Health & Safety officials crawl all over the site, there’s an inquiry, reports are demanded,  procedures are rewritten, etc. etc.

The ability to move about is fundamental to modern life, and all movement is accompanied by an element of risk.  Human beings by nature make errors of judgment, are careless, suffer lapses in concentration; many are competitive, sometimes they like to show off, and some may be aggressive.   All these characteristics suggest that giving people complete freedom to drive high-speed vehicles, capable of wreaking such damage, is bound to be a disaster.   

Climate Change may have lost out to the Credit Crunch in the headlines recently.  But perhaps the Credit Crunch can teach us some valuable lessons. 

An underlying cause of the Credit Crunch was that many of us believed we could fuel a better lifestyle by spending money we hadn’t yet earned, and that this could go on indefinitely.  This was underpinned by greed on the part of many, and recklessness on the part of lenders.  Nobody seemed to be willing to face up to the possible consequences of what was happening.  Many of the victims of the Credit Crunch are not the ones who carry the major guilt for causing the problem.

If there is one piece of good news in the current difficulties it is that finding a solution has resulted in a considerable amount of international co-operation.

Climate Change is similar in many respects – it arises from living beyond our means, thinking about the present and ignoring the future consequences, and it causes more harm to the innocent than to the guilty.  Dealing with it, likewise, would be much easier if we could have cross-party consensus, and the nations of the world could work together. 

Climate Change is different in one very important respect.  We won’t be able to solve it with a couple of emergency cross-party meetings and a hastily-arranged flight across the Atlantic, nor with a sudden injection of a few hundred billion dollars.   Even though the worst of the symptoms may be many years away, solutions need putting in place urgently.  And we all need to play our part in solving it.  And it will require sacrifices.