Kick the Habit: A UN Guide to Climate Neutrality

from the airport instead of a city-centre railway station. Over short distances air travel produces around three times more CO 2 per passenger than rail. It is estimated to account for around 2–3 per cent of global CO 2 emissions and faces intense pressure to cap its output. However, it should not be denied that some of the new high-speed rail services have an appreciable carbon footprint them- selves. Another good option for international or intercity travel may be a coach or bus, certainly better than a car carrying only one person. Within towns and cities buses outperform cars again, but they are seldom as good as trams, light rail systems or metros. Cycling and walking will always be the greenest ways of moving around a city, but not necessarily the safest, quickest or most practi- cable, which understandably makes many people reluctant to try them. That is where urban planners and politicians can make all the difference – by breaking with the dominance of cars in city streets and providing favourable conditions for alternative modes of transport. Having biking lanes and a working public transport system in place is one thing, the other is how useful they are. Urban planning can work towards amore functional and hence amore attractive trans- port system. Locating shopping malls for example in places where they can be easily reached by public transport is a strategy followed by Norway recently. Shipping had been thought to be one of the better forms of transport for keeping GHGs down, but studies show that its global CO 2 emissions are double those of aviation, and rising rapidly. The IMO estimates shipping emissions at almost three per cent of global CO 2 emissions in 2007. Recent articles in the press sug- gests that CO 2 emissions from shipping have been grossly underestimated and would amount to 1 120million tonnes or nearly 4.5 per cent of global CO 2 emis- sions. This is almost twice the UK’s total emissions and exceeds all of Africa’s. The worldwide fleet of 90,000 ships transports 90 percent of the world’s goods, and shipping emissions are projected to grow by more than 70 per- cent by 2020, as global trade expands. In order to tackle those emissions, the European Commission has decided to propose adding shipping companies to the EU Emissions Trading System from which shipping (just as aviation) has been exempted so far. The emissions trading scheme is the 27-nation EU’s key tool to fight global warming and meet commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases agreed under the Kyoto Protocol.

There are several ways of reducing the energy we use in travel and transport. One is to obtain what we use and consume as locally as possible, whether

KICK THE HABIT THE CYCLE – REDUCE

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