<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2802" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Wojtek takes issue with me for putting the words 'stop consuming' in his mouth - but he was the one that put the words 'shut up and keep consuming' in mine. I should have checked his other posts, but my assumption was that if 'keep consuming' is wrong, then 'stop consuming' was the logical corollary.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Wojtek asks me to come clean about my motivations. OK, I do not own a car, have not for the last two years. (Nor am I employed by any car or petrol interests.) I cycle my two children to school, or walk, cycle to work or get the underground. </FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2>But that is a privilege of living in central London.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Wojtek thinks I am a monomaniac about cars. I think that most radicals have an irrational hatred of cars (which if truth be told is just the contemporary form of the petit bourgeois hatred of modernity and mass consumption.)</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>And having lived in a country where three quarters of the price of gasoline is tax, has implemented traffic reduction laws, and invested heavily in public transport, as well as instituting congestion charges in its capital, I have to tell you that these policies have not succeed in slowing the increase in car use. Throughout Europe governments have followed suit. And in each case, new registrations, road use etc. continue to grow year on year.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>There comes a moment, surely, when you have to admit that the policy is not in the grain of human nature, as Burke would have said, or if that is too biological for you, that the policy is utopian, at odds with the real trend in social organisation.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Of course it is true that in areas of high population density, mass transit and walking can play a greater part in transport. But again the social trend is towards lower density living, and has been for a century now.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I tend to agree with Mike Ballard that the medium term outcome will be a better fuel source. But then as Sheikh Yamani said, the Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stones. I might be wrong, but I cannot imagine that social mobility is going to go into reverse, or that we are going to see a return of the Industrial Mass Worker, all stepping in unison from their terraced back-to-backs onto the tram to the factory.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>As I say, I don't have a car. But I hope not to make the mistake of extrapolating out from my own circumstances to make them a blueprint for the rest of the population. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Most people in Britain and the US do not live in cities, but in suburbs, or countryside, where cars are simply the universal means of transport. The internal combustion engine is so profoundly woven into the productive life of the country, whether in terms of the mobility of labour and goods, or in the motorisation of agriculture, that it would make as much sense trying to abolish or limit it as it would to organise a society without computers or electricity.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>