ABSTRACT
The review of the literature in Chapters 2 and 3 has identified institutional issues as the building blocks to initiating new approaches to resource consumption. These chapters specifically focused on the ‘concepts in use’ and the political priorities of transport planning and national and transnational tiers of government. However, the quantitative data on national global greenhouse gas emissions from transport presented in Chapter 1 drew attention to the lack of progress in cutting back the consumption from polluting, non-renewable sources of energy in transport. Explanations from the academic literature highlight the lack of political will to initiate change, the presumption given to travel-time savings for car and freight transport, and the insufficiency of tools for civil servants to assess the selection of interventions across policy sectors to reduce consumption efficiently. A key argument advanced in these early chapters is that neither market actors nor individual citizens can deal with the challenge of adapting to global environmental pressures since the individual ‘payoff’ benefits from changing their behaviour are not clear. In game theory this is called the ‘prisoners’ dilemma’ – whether to remain silent under questioning or to implicate another suspect (Dawkins 1989; Poundstone 1992). If this is the case, the argument in this chapter is that national and transnational government must exert their agency to set an opportunity agenda of incentives and constraints that will both lever flows of private capital for low energy projects and encourage citizens to reduce resource consumption and waste. Chapter 3 promoted the use of the principle of exergy, which derives from ecology and underpins the conception of sustainable development. This concept encourages the prudent use of natural and man-made resources, using the design principles of reducing the resource inputs by Factor 4 and Factor 10 in the production process (see Table 3.3). It would focus attention on the net growth in value of products and services through reduction in resource inputs and would help both to protect ecosystems and set society on the path towards the dematerialisation and re-localisation of the economy. This approach, however, is perceived by a large proportion of society as anti-progress and out of kilter with existing production cycles and the culture of modern society. As such, the very essence of sustainability criticises existing value choices and the direction and outcomes of the modern myth of advancement. It brings into question ‘what is modern?’ and ‘what will progress
in the future look like?’. The West has grown rich from an economic system based on consumption, sourcing the input resources cheaply and selling final products at the price the market can afford. The principles of sustainability (Section 1.3) as espoused by Whitelegg (1997), therefore, appear to conflict with the values of the capitalist market system and the success of nation states measured through the consumption of resources (i.e. gross domestic product (GDP)). Until recently, there have been few threats or consequences if we just carried on as normal; wars and famines, droughts and floods, have seemed far removed from our everyday existence in the developed West. Stronger scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, coupled with more erratic weather and erratic price increases in petrol suggest that we need urgently to adopt a precautionary approach to the protection of natural ecosystems (United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development 1992). If there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the services these ecosystems provide maybe irreversibly damaged, measures to prevent degradation should be taken before the full scientific evidence is available. But this leaves the question of what are the essential changes that must be made? Scientists call for CO2 emissions to be reduced by 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050 to stabilise climate change at the 2° C ‘safe’ rise. Other scientists suggest we are on target to reach a 2° C increase in temperature by 2020 (Hansen 2007; Meyer 2009). Sustainability is a deep challenge to the economic players in society who have achieved their dominance through the market philosophy and the accumulation of capital assets. Market values of freedom of choice, overt consumption, and individuality are embedded in societal culture. Moving away from current production and consumption patterns challenges existing ways of living and challenges embedded power structures and values in society. The market exchange system undervalues or underprices human and natural resources in market decisions (Himanen et al. 2005). Market decision-making criteria are implicated in the more ‘developed’ nations consuming more of their equitable share of global resources. A ‘fair share’ of global resources would be just less than 2 global hectares per person. Scotland has an ecological footprint of 5.37 global hectares per person (North Lanarkshire Partnership 2006: 7). To reverse these consumption levels will require behaviour change by all members of society. The issue is how to engage in a meaningful way with the public about these issues and what course of action can we create that will make ordinary individuals part of the process so that they are willing to change their behaviour? Should this be a moral crusade led by the church and the mosque, suggesting that certain types of consumption are ‘bad’ and that accumulation for show and vanity is ‘morally wrong’? There is a role for scientists and educational institutions, including the media, to demonstrate how the global sourcing of our needs and the pollution from consumption is closely linked to the 800 million people (Ray 2008) in the world struggling to find sufficient
food and the ‘natural’ disasters developing countries are faced with. Yet knowledge of climate change impacts does not equate with awareness, and awareness of the appropriate resource reduction measures does not necessarily turn into adaptive action (Haanpää and Peltonen 2007; Haanpää 2008). This chapter identifies the mechanisms and the tools for engagement that national governments in developed countries have to set a high energy-efficiency opportunity agenda. This will entail a ‘root and branch’ overhaul of the existing resource allocation criteria which inform decision taking. Governments have been reticent of upsetting the basis of their economic success (Lowndes 2001; Giddens 1990) and have relied, instead, on awareness raising and information provision in the hope of producing more discerning consumers. In addition, governments have used a series of economic instruments (e.g. taxes, charges, etc.) on products and behaviour which perform poorly in terms of depleting global natural resources, and provided dispensation for ‘clean’ technological innovations that reduce consumption of carbon. There is, however, still a reliance on producing ‘input’ guidance for lower tiers of government to customise and localise the problem and seek sustainable solutions through their own decision-making processes. The national government in Sweden, however, has set a series of environmental outcomes for lower tiers of government to achieve (see Chapter 7). Part of the problem of behaviour change is the existing organisation of government. The landscape of government is differentiated by a fragmented array of elected bodies and non-elected agencies covering different spatial scales (neighbourhood, district, metropolitan area, sub-regional, regional, national, etc.) often with boundaries that are not co-terminus. Some of these organisations are formal decision-making bodies, while others are primarily policy/service delivery agencies. The landscape is also populated by private sector and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which have different values, agendas and concerns (Evans et al. 2002). Public sector decision making is often a mutual partnership between the public and private sectors, denoted by the concept of governance. Private sector organisations are profit-making bodies that pay a dividend to their shareholders. NGOs tend to have a single theme focus and, while covering all their costs, also rely on volunteers. Public sector organisations usually have a remit to provide for the whole of the community within their jurisdiction irrespective of the individual’s ability to pay for the service offered. However, public sector organisations are increasingly run on strict value for money criteria in order for the government to keep a tight rein on the public sector borrowing requirement. The different values implicit in these organisations often require some compromise if they are to collaborate successfully on new ventures. To achieve the resource reduction required to stabilise climate change will require unprecedented levels of social organisation to implement the radical shifts in policy and the new investment focus on low energy solutions. There is substantial
evidence that climate change policies have impacted neither on land use planning legislation and decisions (Haanpää and Peltonen 2007) nor on transport strategy and scheme appraisal practices so far (Hull and Tricker 2005). Chapter 5 will explore the reasons for this failure to incorporate climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies into major infrastructure policy and provision. In those countries where the market philosophy prevails, public transit services (bus, tram, rail and air travel) are provided by private sector organisations and run to a commercial agenda. Transport infrastructure is normally funded by the public sector as a public good, and often public resources are made available to secure more frequent, and reliable, public transit services to the CBD and to housing locations where residents are reliant on public transport. Public transport is the more resourceefficient means of travel in a sustainable future and an appropriate service to link residential areas to commercial and employment areas needs to be in place before demand restraint measures for the car can have an effect. The implementation of sustainable transport measures relies on integrated working across different policy domains and the public and private sectors. To reduce our ecological footprint will necessitate a complete overhaul of our implicit values and accepted ways of working until new resource-efficient practices become embedded in society. This raises several questions concerning how to support each other along this journey:
• What actions will be most effective in stabilising our global greenhouse gas emissions by 2020?
