Real alternative transport options
IF ANYONE needs an example of sharp analysis of
environmental issues they should look at Biofuels Profits, in Socialism
Today, June 2007. In just two pages Manny Thain devastates all the
shallow arguments about biofuels and shows why capitalists opt for this
non-solution that, instead of saving the world, will make things worse.
With all this biofuel propaganda saying ‘let’s keep
dirty petrol engines but tinker with them to make them greener’ any
debate on electric cars disappears. If we want clean road vehicles then
electric cars are still our best bet. But this would need a level of
investment no capitalist company can risk. Also, the powerful petrol/oil
companies have too much to lose — their existence (ie profits) is
totally locked in to dirty petrol engines.
A switch to electric cars doesn’t have to mean the
same number of cars on the roads as before. For medium and long-distance
journeys we could encourage people to go by train. Trains use up much
less land to transport people (and goods) than cars on roads. At the
height of the Railway Age there were 18,000 miles of track in this
country. Less than 2,000 miles are now used, and a lot of the unused
rail land is still there and could be reused for trains. Also, to make
trains more appealing they would have to be a lot cheaper to use than
cars — that means big subsidies and being publicly owned (we all
know how the private train companies give government subsidies to their
shareholders instead of investing in the train network).
A good, extensive train system should be linked to a
good local electric bus system (publicly owned for the same reason as
above). Electric car pools at some railway stations would further cut
the need for privately owned cars. People could hire these cars at cheap
rates (if the cars are publicly owned).
What I’m talking about here is a truly integrated
public transport system — something that the capitalist media has
conveniently forgotten about as they push for modified dirty petrol
engines. That’s because the investment and planning needed can’t be done
in the anarchy of the market place — look at what happened to the rail
system as soon as they let private companies run it. The only way we can
get a clean and useful transport system is by the sort of planning only
a socialist economy can give us. It’s true, to be green you have to be
red.
Andy Hammond
Woodford, London
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