Sep 13th, 2008
Transportation Meltdown
I cherish the hope that erelong the facilities in the means of communication and transport will serve to draw us still nearer to one another, and fulfill, though partially, this long-desired wish. Shoghi Effendi, Baha’i writings
Today was a very bad day for British travellers. Overnight, the third largest package travel company in the country, XL, went into receivership, stranding up to 90,000 tourists in some 100 countries and leaving some 200,000 people who had already paid for their holidays without air transportation. Its going to be difficult to find flights home for so many people!
For those who thought they might get around by travelling back to the island of Britain by car or train, a big fire in the Channel tunnel means that it has been closed all day. While some reports say that the tunnel may be opened again very soon, the last time there was a fire of this magnitude the tunnel did not become fully operational for several months.
I suppose I should mention the cost of fuel, which is being blamed for the demise of XL and which means that car drivers (not to mention other ground transport) are facing huge bills - the cheapest I have found is £1.09 a litre in Derby (that was today - I went there for a meeting of the trustees of the Multi-Faith Centre) - around here the lowest price is £1.12 a litre.
A few years ago it was a series of train accidents that closed many of the main lines into London and created transport chaos. The London Underground has many lines closed most weekends, as essential repairs to the Victorian system are carried out.
Transportation, in all its forms, is increasingly expensive and unreliable in all its forms. But despite the cost and difficulties, we still continue to travel. Many of us have to, just to get to work. We know that we are using up dwindling fossil fuels, that we are creating pollution that is contributing to global warming, that we drive when we could walk or take public transport. We recognise the irony of travelling distances to conferences where we talk about how we can tackle climate change.
Changing the way we travel will mean changing the way we live. Somehow we will have to find ways to develop communities where people can work closer to where they live, without requiring people to live in unpleasant surroundings near factories or industrial estates, or urbanising the rest of the countryside. We need to think about reshaping work itself, not just to make it more sustainable in terms of the environment but also to take account of the different needs of women employees, older people, those with disabilities and those who have responsibilities for elder care.
We need to think about how we bring up our children, whether we will allow them to walk to school, play outside, go to the park, ride bicycles, climb trees or whether we think that these are such dangerous activities that they should be prohibited or curtailed.
We need to think about what we eat, how it is produced, where it is produced and how it is stored and transported.
The complexity of the decisions we need to make about how to live more lightly in the future should not be underestimated. We can’t simply relocate people, make cities disappear, grow food on unsuitable land. We cannot make the environment entirely risk free for our children. We can travel more efficiently and economically but we probably can’t stop travelling.
If the planes are still flying and the trains still running, I shall soon be travelling to the Netherlands to attend the European Bahá’í Business Forum annual conference at De Poort where many of these things will be discussed. I do recognise the irony! The conference theme is `Growth or Sustainability? Defining, Measuring and Achieving Prosperity’. It is over subscribed, so there are no more places left, but there will be an online experience - a blog with the videos of the talks and the possibility to interact with participants and other interested individuals. Check out http://ebbf.org/ac2008-latest.html from next Friday. You will get a lot of the benefits of the conference without increasing your carbon footprint or having to suffer the transportation meltdown!
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