Going Deeper

Along with food, this travel category is one of the most important ones on the Living Lightly website.

Most of the sections within travel focus on reducing our car usage and, instead, increasing our use of public transport or walking and cycling more. There are somewhere between 500-600 million cars in the world and nearly 29 million new cars are made each year: car traffic is expected to increase by 22% by 2010. Of those 480 million, 90% are owned by the sixteen wealthiest countries (one fifth of the world’s population). In the UK the car is used for more and more shorter journeys. Twenty-five per cent of car trips are under two miles and 61% are under five miles. In the USA in 2005 1,689,965,000,000 miles were driven by passenger cars!

In contrast, in the UK, there are an estimated 22 million bikes in the UK but only 5 million are regularly used. The average person in the UK makes just 14 trips a year by bicycle

The costs of owning a car reach far beyond the financial:

Firstly, there is the cost to ourselves. The emissions from a car consist of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, benzene, hydrocarbons and particulates. Road traffic is the fastest-growing source of air pollution and constitutes 70% of carbon monoxide emissions. Interestingly, tests show that, in heavy traffic, pollution levels are higher inside a car than outside. In contrast to the health problems caused by driving, a regular adult cyclist shows the fitness level of a person ten years younger than a non-cyclist of the same age.

As well as our health, the increase in car usage has had a dramatic impact on our communities. Parents are afraid to let their children walk to school or play outside because of the traffic. This is understandable when you consider that the most common cause of death for children under fifteen is a road accident.

The second cost is to the environment. Cars produce a fifth of the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions, and nearly a quarter of the US’s, and it is expected that fuel consumption from private-car owners will increase globally by up to 130% in twenty-five years.

The effect that road-building has on the countryside was highlighted dramatically by the protests around the building of the M3 through the wetland meadows and chalk grasslands of Twyford Down, and the building of the Newbury Bypass through the precious heathland of Snelsmore Common. Road-building threatens priceless wildlife sites and kills millions of animals. Our petrol comes from the oil that is imported into Britain on sea tankers. There have been several well-publicized and horrific oil disasters, not least that of the Sea Empress, which ran aground off Wales in 1996 and spilled 70,000 tonnes of crude oil, ruining the local fishing industry and destroying countless numbers of wildlife and seabirds.

Thus the suggestions in this travel category of Living Lightly are mainly about encouraging us to get out of our cars! Whether that be through changing to an electric or hybrid car, walking or cycling more, using public transport, car sharing or even getting rid of our cars all together, we have got to be prepared to make that change. And, when we do, we will discover that it might be more convenient to jump into the car; but that, actually, walking or cycling somewhere slows us down positively, helps us appreciate the changing seasons, lets us say hello to the passing stranger, makes us fitter; car sharing leads to a new friendship with a work colleague and the train takes us through countryside we’d never noticed before…

And if you absolutely have to drive, then follow the suggestions to help you change your driving patterns to drive in a more fuel-efficient way. In particular, the largest amount of fuel relatively speaking is used in braking and accelerating, so it makes a big amount of difference if we anticipate the road ahead and slow down or speed up gently.

Alongside our car usage, though, another key area in our travel is flying. Cheaper flights mean that more and more of us are choosing to travel by aeroplane. It is forecast that by 2030 in the UK there will be 500 million plane passengers a year.15 The problems are immense: climate change from the carbon dioxide emissions (air travel is the fastest-growing source of emissions), health risks from toxic nitrogen oxide emissions, noise pollution, and development pressures with road traffic congestion and with greenfield sites tarmacked over for runways and car parks. The harsh reality is that our flying habits need to be severely curtailed and we must make sure we have our say in these matters by pressing the Government not to push ahead with its plans for airport expansions.

(This material has been adapted from Ruth Valerio’s, L is for Lifestyle: Christian living that doesn’t cost the earth, www.lisforlifestyle.com.)

Ruth Valerio, 10/05/2009