IN THE BUBBLE JOHN THACKARA - witz cultural

Mobility 53
air travel in India are salivating at that prospect, but environmentalists pray
that far fewer of the 5.5 million Indians who now take the train each year
will take to the skies as the economy grows. Eurocontrol estimates, conservatively
in this context, that air passenger numbers will double by 2015. 7
Predict-and-provide thinking drives plans for new airports and more
planes. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (better known
as NASA) has developed scenarios under which the number of aircraft
departures in the United States would increase—from today’s thirty-seven
million (including general aviation) to five hundred million a year. 8 Does
that sound sustainable?
We Europeans are proud of our high-speed trains and believe them to be
far more environmentally friendly than aircraft. But we’re wrong. Highspeed
trains are not a light alternative. A total of forty-eight kilograms
(about a hundred pounds) of solid primary resources is needed for one passenger
to travel one hundred kilometers by Germany’s high-speed train.
Life-cycle researchers at Martin Luther University used materials flow analysis
and life cycle analysis to study the construction, use, and disposal of
the system’s rail infrastructure. They measured everything: the running
costs of train retrofitting factories, the gasoline used by passengers getting
to the station, even the provision of drinking water. They added these to
numbers for the carbon dioxide emissions, cumulative energy demand,
and so on to derive a ‘‘material input per service unit,’’ or MIPS, for train
service. The energy demands of the traction process—actually moving the
train—dominate the system’s life cycle, but the construction of tunnels
and heating rail track points during winter also impose a significant cost. 9
Cars do more environmental and social damage than air and train combined.
In 1950 there were 60 million of them in the world; by 2000, when
I started writing this book, their number had grown to 535 million. 10 We
are now traveling 50 percent more than we did twenty years ago as a result.
The average German citizen now drives fifteen thousand kilometers a year;
in 1950, she covered just two thousand kilometers. But few car owners
have a choice in the matter. Much of this travel involves commuting and
work-related travel that we cannot avoid.
The time costs are severe. One hour of mobility a day over a working year
of 220 days adds up to a vacation missed of five to six weeks. Add in the
money you have to earn to do this commuting and the costs are higher.