Thinking of driving to Hay? ... read
on. Photograph: Mike Kittrell/AP.
Global warming is a "national security emergency" and the country must adopt a "war footing" to deal with it, according to one panellist in a debate on the future of the car at this year's Hay Festival, writes science correspondent James Randerson.
According to renowned environmentalist Jeremy Leggett, the CEO of Solar Century - a company that promotes solar energy - global warming "is going to lay waste to national economies and ecosystems with quite the effectiveness of an invading army - therefore we need to mobilise for it on a war footing".
Leggett will be speaking tomorrow at a Hay Festival debate entitled Cars Are Killing The Planet, which is sponsored by The Economist. Channel 4 news frontman and enthusiastic cyclist Jon Snow will chair the discussion.
Leggett argues that governments should adopt draconian regulations to, for example, improve fuel efficiency or sweeping changes to planning rules, which would combat urban sprawl and so restrict car use: "If we really believed in the nature of the threat we wouldn't even question these things. In the same way that we didn't when we had to rapidly find ways of building shed loads of Spitfires and Lancasters."
Economist writer Vijay Vaitheeswaran will argue that the perceived problems with cars can be solved with new technology. "The car is one of the greatest inventions of modern times. It means mobility and freedom. It's an extraordinary expression of individual style and personality."
"The problem is not cars, the problem is oil," he argues. "The clean car of the future can give us all of the benefits with very few of the problems we mistakenly identify with the car."
In the short term Vaitheeswaran believes alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel can reduce emissions, for example in Brazil, where half the transport fuel is ethanol from sugar cane. In 20 to 30 years he thinks hydrogen vehicles will take over from our current polluting gas-guzzlers.
Another panellist, Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas suggests the glossy magazine image of the car as a symbol of freedom is becoming increasingly removed from reality. "By the time they introduced the congestion charge in London the idea that driving in London was anything to do with freedom I think would have made most people laugh in a rather hollow way."
"On this issue as with so many people are always reaching for a very easy technical fix which means that they can just carry on with business as usual," she says. "Smarter consumption is not enough, we actually have to consume less and that's not as terrifying as many people think.
"If anything else were killing 3,000 people a day we would be having major conferences about how to stop this epidemic, but when its cars we just treat it as some kind of unfortunate and unavoidable byproduct."
Edmund King, executive director of the RAC Foundation, will argue that restricting car use is not practical. "I'll bet your bottom dollar that three quarters of the people at Hay-on-Wye will have got there by car," he said, "The chattering classes love to criticise the car but they've all got one. Try and park in Hampstead."
