The Oil Drum: Canada

First practical step to 90% emissions reduction

As we all know the real problem with the whole Global Warming problem and the measures to take to tackle it, is that the implicit message is that you cannot challenge Capitalism. Only market based solutions that fall into the Neo Liberal agenda may be discussed. Hence partially as a result of this we have lots and lots of debate, discussion and main stream coverage of all sorts of technical schemes, break-throughs all of which ultimately would lead to new products and markets to sell. Yet they all lie in the relatively distant future so far as the absolute urgency of Global Warming is concerned

However, we can actually do something right now about aiming for 90% emissions reduction and that is to introduce free public transport over the next few months in every major town and city in the motorized world.

We already have at least one successful template in the form of the city of Hasselt (pop 77k) in Belgium who introduced free public transport back in 1997. And not only that, they showed how to do a proper job of it, because for the few months before they increased the size of their bus fleet and the frequency and generally improved the service in other ways like extra routes. This meant they were prepared for the diluge of people on the day that it was made free. And it worked.

There is no reason that this process cannot be started immediately everywhere. There are no technical hurdles to overcome, if extra buses are needed, it's standard stuff. The only problems are political.

For info on Hasselt, see for example:
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=201965
http://www.leda.ils.nrw.de/database/cities/city0100.htm

And also http://www.freepublictransit.org/index.php?pr=News