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01-12-07, 11:28 AM
Car Boom Puts Europe on Road to a Smoggy Future
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: January 7, 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/europe/07cars.html?_r=1&ref=environment&oref=slogin)
I thought a lot of you might be interested in this NYT article. Four points that I thought were especially interesting:
But in this booming city [Dublin], where the number of cars has doubled in the last 15 years, there is little choice, they said. “Believe me — if there was an alternative we would use it,” said Ms. O’Connell, 40, a textile designer. “We care about the environment. It’s just hard to follow through here.”
No trains run to the new suburbs where hundreds of thousands of Dubliners now live, and the few buses going there overflow with people. So nearly everyone drives — to work, to shop, to take their children to school — in what seems like a constant smoggy, traffic jam. Since 1990, emissions from transportation in Ireland have risen about 140 percent, the most in Europe. But Ireland is not alone.
This sounds a lot like things we hear in the states every day. People tell me it's impossible to be carfree here, even when they know they're talking to somebody who is carfree!
The 23 percent growth in vehicular emissions in Europe since 1990 has “offset” the effect of cleaner factories, according to a recent report by the European Environment Agency. The growth has occurred despite the invention of far more environmentally friendly fuels and cars.
“What we gain by hybrid cars and ethanol buses, we more than lose because of sheer numbers of vehicles,” said Ronan Uhel, a senior scientist with the European Environment Agency, which is based in Copenhagen. Vehicles, mostly cars, create more than one-fifth of the greenhouse-gas emissions in Europe, where the problem has been extensively studied.
Cars are gaining, worldwide, as sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
The few places that have aggressively sought to fight the trend have taken sometimes draconian measures. Denmark, for example, treats cars the way it treats yachts — as luxury items — imposing purchase taxes that are sometimes 200 percent of the cost of the vehicle. A simple Czech-made Skoda car that costs $18,400 in Italy or Sweden costs more than $34,000 in Denmark.
In another NYT article recently, it was pointed out that, in annual surveys, the Danes are consistently the "happiest people in the developed world." I don't know if this has anything to do with their limitations on cars....
The number of bicycles on Danish streets has increased in recent years, and few people under the age of 30 own cars. Many families have turned to elaborate three-wheeled contraptions. (Beijing, meanwhile, has restricted the use of traditional three-wheeled bikes.)
The "elaborate three-wheeled contraptions" referred to in the article are Christiana bikes. (http://www.christianiabikes.com/english/uk_main.htm) Do you like them? Would they be competetive with xracyles here in the states?
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: January 7, 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/world/europe/07cars.html?_r=1&ref=environment&oref=slogin)
I thought a lot of you might be interested in this NYT article. Four points that I thought were especially interesting:
But in this booming city [Dublin], where the number of cars has doubled in the last 15 years, there is little choice, they said. “Believe me — if there was an alternative we would use it,” said Ms. O’Connell, 40, a textile designer. “We care about the environment. It’s just hard to follow through here.”
No trains run to the new suburbs where hundreds of thousands of Dubliners now live, and the few buses going there overflow with people. So nearly everyone drives — to work, to shop, to take their children to school — in what seems like a constant smoggy, traffic jam. Since 1990, emissions from transportation in Ireland have risen about 140 percent, the most in Europe. But Ireland is not alone.
This sounds a lot like things we hear in the states every day. People tell me it's impossible to be carfree here, even when they know they're talking to somebody who is carfree!
The 23 percent growth in vehicular emissions in Europe since 1990 has “offset” the effect of cleaner factories, according to a recent report by the European Environment Agency. The growth has occurred despite the invention of far more environmentally friendly fuels and cars.
“What we gain by hybrid cars and ethanol buses, we more than lose because of sheer numbers of vehicles,” said Ronan Uhel, a senior scientist with the European Environment Agency, which is based in Copenhagen. Vehicles, mostly cars, create more than one-fifth of the greenhouse-gas emissions in Europe, where the problem has been extensively studied.
Cars are gaining, worldwide, as sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
The few places that have aggressively sought to fight the trend have taken sometimes draconian measures. Denmark, for example, treats cars the way it treats yachts — as luxury items — imposing purchase taxes that are sometimes 200 percent of the cost of the vehicle. A simple Czech-made Skoda car that costs $18,400 in Italy or Sweden costs more than $34,000 in Denmark.
In another NYT article recently, it was pointed out that, in annual surveys, the Danes are consistently the "happiest people in the developed world." I don't know if this has anything to do with their limitations on cars....
The number of bicycles on Danish streets has increased in recent years, and few people under the age of 30 own cars. Many families have turned to elaborate three-wheeled contraptions. (Beijing, meanwhile, has restricted the use of traditional three-wheeled bikes.)
The "elaborate three-wheeled contraptions" referred to in the article are Christiana bikes. (http://www.christianiabikes.com/english/uk_main.htm) Do you like them? Would they be competetive with xracyles here in the states?