The Pied Piper of Bogotá

Contents

Feature Articles

The Regulars

Introduction

THE ECCLECTIC COLLECTION

Welcome to the 11th Car Busters magazine—the “it’s all changed a bit,” schitzophrenic, revolutionary, themeless edition.
In these pages you will find an eccletic mix which represents the different areas of interest and styles in our oh-so-dysfunctional collective family; an edition that manages to simultaneaously discuss the future of Bogotá, including an interview with ex-mayor Peñalosa himself, whom our Ivana gladly jumped “in bed with”! (see page 11); children and car addiction (page 14); and the global climate crisis—who, what, where, when and how any meaningful opportunities to prevent climate chaos are being weakened, messed up or utterly overthrown. And what you can do about it (page 20).
   You will not find AP Press rules, as we got fed up with the dichotomy between English language and spelling and American press rules, and dropped it like a hot cake. You will (probably) find lots of errors, as our proof reading expert has left us. The first person to spot 10 errors, or more, will win a free one year subscription to our free-style, anarchic, and ecletic little rag...
We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed writing it!
 

Letters

Car-Free and Loving It!
Hello, just writing to let you know I tried to send a big “smiley face” to you, as I am in complete support of the car-free movement and would like to get more involved in/informed on this campaign.
   For the last three years, my wife and I have totally abandoned car driving, mostly out of disgust for what it does to the environment and to people’s behaviour. We both feel liberated from those poll-uting little metal boxes and enjoy getting around by train, the Paris metro, the bus and above all by foot.
   It is a source of hope and encourage-ment to know of organisations such as Car Busters, and I would be most happy to be able to participate in any event or specific campaign organised by your organisation.
Michael Sanner
Paris, France

One From the United States of the Automobile
I read about you in the Utne Reader (U.S. alternative magazine). I just visited your website and want to express my heartfelt support of what you are doing. I live less than five miles from my place of work (planned it that way!) and never have to drive there. I combine cycling (my most frequent and favored method), hovering (on my newly purchased Zappy electric scooter), taking the bus, and occasional car-pooling to get to work.
   Please keep up your valuable efforts to eliminate the car dominated culture, which is no more apparent than here in the USA (that’s the United States of the Automobile!).
Jonathan Balcombe, Ph.D.
Germantown, Maryland, USA

Luddites Are Us!
I totally support the car-free movement!
   I believe that our society would be much better without these polluter-monsters out there on the streets.
   I lived in a big city, São Paulo, and the pollution, traffic jams and car crashes are a big problem there.
   I moved to the countryside a couple of months ago because all those problems were making me suicidal.
   Basically I’m a Luddite, I support everything that is against “bad progress.”
   This is my theory:
   There is good evolution or progress and bad evolution. Every effort made to achieve a better co-existence between men and nature is greatly welcome. Everything that improves the quality and the well-being of the water, air, food, plants, soil—all animals—and doesn’t pollute or degrade the biosphere in any way is welcome.
   Everything that is used for luxury, greed, domination and pollutes and degrades the air, the soil, the water, or life generally, is bad. No matter how much profit can be made by using these things.
   So...I’m by your side!!!
Leandro da Fonseca
Brazil

Why Be Nice? They Aren’t.
The major problem with being nice to motorists as Philip and many others advocate [see Letters, Car Busters #10] is that there is not the time to be nice if the planet is to be saved.
   The multinationals are certainly not very nice, particularly the oil industry. Few governments, if any, are nice. The World Bank is not nice. Are any banks nice?
   This being nice seems to be a very one-sided thing.
   I am surprised at how often I hear the number “50 years” coming up as a time when things are going to be really bad. This number is within the lifetime of a very large number of people.
   As a very famous actor once said, “it is very easy to demonstrate that people are stupid” and the above mentioned know this equally well and exploit it for all it is worth. Being nice is going on far too long to save the planet.
   Oh, and motorists are not even nice to themselves in general.
Ian D. Hague
Tiptree, England

Standard Fare in Southern California
Good News. Bad News.
   Bad News: Transit strike in Freeway City. We’re in our third week with no break in sight. Good News: I sold my car and am free of the whole system.
   [Here] in L.A. The Metropolitan Transit Authority board seems not to care less how long the strike continues as they receive approximately the same funding regardless.
   Writing this letter at the bus stop,  watching near-empty cars pass, waiting for the scantly operating shuttles, I bemoan the opportunistic stubbornness of the cab drivers.
   You see, they are strictly sticking to the rules, regulations and high fares in spite of current circumstances. Why, if they’d just follow the bus routes and charge a couple of dollars, they could make a bundle. This practice is followed throughout the world.
   All of a sudden, I look up from the page and a van opens its doors.
   “Cobras o es un Iglesia?” I saw an old Korean man in the front seat and honestly thought it was a church group.
   “Cobramos. Adonde vas?”
   “Hasta Pico. Cuanto?”
   “Un dolar.”
   I put my fingers to my lips and climbed in.
   “Solo un dolar. Mejor te doy dos.” What a pleasure. My first day without a car and I was already among the fine carless citizens of our city. There is a common myth that you cannot live in L.A. without a car. I did for seven years and am back at it after a three-year lapse. In my opinion, it is closer to the truth that you can think clearly in L.A. only without a car.
   I sat back and breathed a sigh of relief. Like the silent spaces between the phrases of great music, this was an important break.
   We arrived at Pico. “Sigale. Merecen un premio ustedes. Muy amable.” My next ride arrived in under a minute. A lone woman in a white van. We honked at passengers, but only one climbed aboard. The rest gave us distrusting looks. The local media have labelled these cabbies “criminals.” Their popular name is Riteros, from the word “ride.” They face heavy fines and possible jail time. Seems odd, but here that’s just standard fare.
Michael Jacob Rochlin
Unreinforced Masonry Studio
Los Angeles, California, USA

Thank you
...for being there.
   I was a Buster before I knew it. Growing up in the auto capital of the world l learned to hate cars at a very early age. Certainly a compulsion which did not endear me to my dad who retired from Buick with 48 years of service.
   I had a knack for making the people around me feel uncomfortable. A knack still with me today, except that I don’t feel like it’s a curse any longer. Seems like I was always running around pissing off people and then apologizing for it.
   It feels really good knowing there are others out there who can appreciate when I say one of my greatest achievements in life so far is, I’ve never owned a car. This February I turn 46.
Steve Goodman
Tucson, Arizona, USA

Pavement-Ripping Ahoy
Thank you for an excellent magazine!
   You’re doing a great job. And you have a lot of great ideas. I think I’m soon going to try to remove some pavement here in Trondheim, Norway...
Magnus Killingland
 

Car Cult Review

“The machine of a dream, such a clean machine
With the pistons a pumpin’, and the hubcaps all gleam.
When I’m holding your wheel, All I hear is your gear,
When my hand’s on your grease gun,
Oh it’s like a disease, son,
I’m in love with my car, gotta feel for my automobile,
Get a grip on my boy racer rollbar,
Such a thrill when your radials squeal.”
- Queen, “I’m in Love With My Car”, 1975

We Love Cars!
More Than Our Kids...
People from Ohio, USA, love their cars more than their own children or partner. According to a survey by an insurance company called Progressive, 45 percent of married men and women declared the car to be the most important thing in their life, while only six percent prefered their children and ten percent prefered their partner.
   As St. Valentine’s Day is approaching, 17 percent of respondents have decided to buy a present for their metal darlings. About one third of respondents give their car a name and 84 percent feel genuine love towards it.
- Právo, February 1

For The American Love
In the pictures, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe get out of the car and stroll down the red carpet past the fans and paparazzi. Most people see the clothes, the hair, the glamour of stardom. Jaroslav Zvonar sees the 1959 Cadillac.
   Like a little boy in his secret hideout, the president and founder of the first Veteran U.S. Car Club Praha looks around his clubhouse—filled with pictures of Presley and Monroe, an electric guitar, record albums, license plates. But these are minor rock n’roll relics when compared to Zvonar’s collection of classic automobiles.
   The Veteran U.S. Car Club Praha  has about 100 members who share Zvonar’s love of the American automobile. “America isn’t America without the Mustang or the Corvette or the Cadillac,” he says.
   Zvonar’s first American car was a 1970 Cadillac Seville, but his collecting began with his first BMW in 1967. Collecting hot rods was a formidable task, especially in the icy days of Czechoslovak “normal-isation.” Though easier now, the hobby is still an expensive one.
   Zvonar earns money by renting his cars to film and commercial productions. He is also a jack-of-all-trades, doing construction and repair work, even acting, to finance his collection.
   Why? It’s his admiration for American automobile designers in the ’50s and ’60s. “Back then, they still created,” he says. “They really thought about cars, how to make them the most interesting, the best looking. Like the front of the Cadillac or the fins at the back.” He brightens up at the thought of the Caddie. His is mint green. He won’t let anyone else wash it.
   Today Zvonar specialises in cars with tail fins. “I like that they’re big—a gorgeous ride,” he explains, mimicking a steering wheel with his hands. “It’s a powerful engine... If you step on it you could tear off the floor... All the luxuries and benefits are there: a smooth ride, automatic trans-mission, it heats, it’s safe. You don’t have to be afraid of anything—tons of metal around you.”
   While he may dote on one and search fervently for another, Zvonar loves all the cars equally. “It’s hard to pick just one. I like them all—that’s why I have them. The one I was probably most excited about getting was my first Corvette, the Stingray.”
   The boy inside beams and proudly adds: “It’s red.”
- Prague Post, November 2000

Noise Takes its Toll
Margo Mamou works on the front lines of traffic—and it’s a pain. “After a while it does start hurting your ears,” says Mamou, who’s experienced nine years of snarling, honking vehicles as a toll-taker at the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, USA.
   Physicists who specialise in acoustics are looking for ways to help people who have to coexist with the growing road racket of the 21st century. But research proceeds slowly—and, so far, there’s no panacea, scientists admit.
   At Purdue University in West Lafayette,  scientists are investigating “noise cancelling” headsets. Unfortunately, this “solution” has proved less than satisfactory.
   While the headsets did substantially reduce noise exposure, toll collectors “didn’t like wearing a headset. It’s heavy on the head, messes up your hair, and presses on your ears,” said Robert Bernhard, head of the university’s Institute for Safe, Quiet and Durable Highways.
   Nevertheless, an environmental engineer, Victor Zeuzem dreams of a day when, thanks to science, roads will be so quiet that there won’t be any need for noise barriers.
   “Not only do barriers cost $1 million a mile to construct, they’re also sometimes unattractive, can block sun-light and lure graffiti artists,” Zeuzem says. In some cases, homeowners have complained that road barriers actually worsen noise.
   So “quieter” roads and tires are an appealing alternative—if only science could perfect them. For many years, engineers around the world have experimented with relatively new types of “quiet” road surfaces, such as “porous asphalt.” They’re quieter because they contain small holes that absorb sound from tires. However, dirt tends to clog the pores and thus eliminate noise-suppressing capabilities over time.
- SF Examiner, November 2000

Interesting Calming Methods
New York City Transportation Department tries really hard to calm traffic, especially  the pedestrian one.
   At busy Manhattan corners signs  were posted, warning pedestrians to get out of the way of big trucks that mount kerbs and pavements while blundering through the crowded neighbourhood. The signs inform the public that “pedestrian injuries are preventable.”
In another part of the city the department proposed narrowing pave-ments to make the street more of an on-ramp for a highway. So far the area has featured fairly heavy pedestrian traffic which apparently needs to be calmed down.
- Adapted from Transportation Alternatives listserve #716
 

Industry Watch

GREENHOUSEGASES

Fed up with wading through a mountain of impressive sounding acronyms every time you want to challenge the Global Economy? Irritated by their seemingly innocent nature, only to reveal the insidious and conniving organisations these acronyms stand for? Is it a delibrate ploy to confuse and bore us into submission? Well it won’t work.
   This guide is a completely biased attempt to help you understand who’s who in the Greenhouse Gases (GHG)emissions trading market.

API American Petroleum Institute. Enthusiastic member of the Global Climate Coalition, the API represents the entire American petroleum industry and believes that climate change is not caused by human activities.
   Strong advocates of “voluntary” action for reduction of emissions and environmental legislation as opposed to mandatory action.

BRT Business Round Table. American equivalent of the European Round Table. An association of Chief Executive Officers representing leading U.S. corporations and the interests of American people as consumers, employees, share holders and suppliers. Not as  living breathing members of the human race then!
   Like other groups of this nature they are big supporters of voluntary   actions arguing that they will “shock” the economic system too much.

WWW.CO2.E.COM. It’s not an acronym but they deserve mentioning. It is here on this website that 24 hour online carbon trading will take place. Founded in 2000 by Cantor Fitzgeralds and accountants Price Waterhouse Coopers, their aim is to prepare corporations globally to understand and manage the impact of GHGs. Check out the website glossary for all the new business jargon.

ERT European Round Table. Set up in 1983 the ERT consists of 49 powerful European industries, whose aims are to promote competitiveness and growth of Europe’s economy. By identifying economic issues, analysing  critical factors the ERT influence political decision makers in Europe. Oddly enough, quite frequently suggestions they make creep themselves into policies some 6 months later such as the TransEuropean Network.

EIT Countries (at present mostly in Central and Eastern Europe) where economies are in a tran-sitional and development phase.

EMA Emissions Marketing Associ- ation. Lobbies against any kind of restrictions or limitations on the use of emissions trading.

ENS European Nuclear Society. A bit buggered because one thing they did come up with in Den Haag was that nukes would not be an acceptable within the Clean Development Mechanisms. However, the USA, Canada and Japan will continue working tirelessly to prevent any move to exclude nuclear power completely.

G7/G8 A very powerful group of 8 industrialised nations; the USA, Britain, Japan, France, Canada, Italy, Germany and since the fall of communism, Russia.

GCC Global Climate Coalition. Founded in 1989 it is an amalgamation of trade associa-tions. At present they are arguing for a new direction for climate issues; their executive director Glenn Kelly argues that the Kyoto Protocol will severely harm the U.S. economy, all American families, workers, seniors and children. This crew is so dodgy that Shell, BP Amoco, Ford and General Motors have all pulled out and decided to attempt to work with the Kyoto Protocol—but only because they realised they would make lots and lots of dollars from carbon trading and cornering the renewable energy market.

ICC International Chamber of Commerce. The fundamental belief of the ICC is that “trade is a powerful force for peace.” Having been around since 1919 these guys know how to play the field. Every year the hosts of the G8 summit meet with the presidency of the ICC, for what has become deemed as a highly effective means of channeling business recom-mendations to summit leaders. A little known but hugely influential lobbying body.
   The USCIB, the US Council for International Business, is the US branch of the ICC.

IETA International Emissions Trading Association. IETA prides itself in being an independent non-profit making organisation dedicated to the establishment of effective systems for trading in GHGs. IETA are also closely aligned to World Business Council For Sustainable Development and their office facilities are provided by the International petroleum exchange. IETA set up and run Co2e.com.
Also members of IETA are the following, who along with the World Bank have set up the GEF, Global Environmental Facility, loaning and granting money to developing coutries.

UNEP United Nations Environment Programme.

UNDP United Nations Development Programme.

IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The UN’s own panel of scientists who have recommended that GHGs be reduced by 70 percent.

JUSCANNZ No, this is not a joke. This means a group of non-European Union industrialised nations resistant to the European Union’s early efforts to reduce emissions.

OPEC Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Eleven deve-loping countries that provide 40 percent of the world’s oil supply.

WBCSD World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Set up coincidentally* in January 1995, in Geneva, folks here would not know what sustainability was if it came up and bit them on their lardy arses.
 Their formula seems to be to churn out the criticism about what a terrible state the world is in and then lovingly bestow praise on one or all of their 150 members, consisting of oil, chemical and car companies about what a real difference they are making to the world.
* same time, same place as the World Trade Organisation.

World Bank Group (also members of IETA)
More acronyms than pollutants in the air per square cm over a Shell oil refinery. The World Bank has been increasingly shifting some of its more controversial projects to its lesser known “arms” in the hope of escaping further bad publicity. Members include:

IFC International Financial Corporation, exists to promote groups in the private sector.

IDA International Development Agency, invests in very poor countries.

IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, owned by 153 countries, invests in developing countries in the ‘advanced’ stages of development.

MIGA Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, established to promote equity investment.
 

HOW TO COMMUNICATE YOUR COMPANY’S ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT.

Written for industry, this intriguing book, Going Green by E Bruce Harrison offers an insight into the working of P.R. campaigns by companies to portray a “green” image—or greenwash us. It’s bold, it’s cheeky, it takes the piss—but we particuarly like this chapter.

What To Do When You’re Attacked By An Activist Group
What happens if you are publicly targeted, picketed, put on notice through angry media play or singled out for hostile stormy action by green activists?
   In Oriental martial arts, such as jujitsu, the target of the attacker uses the energy of the attacker. The physical thrust is channeled so that an attack is averted. In effect we are looking past the attack and into the hearts and the minds of the attackers.

Take Control of the News
Have spokespersons lined up ready and strategically placed, line up credible third parties, erase “no comment” from your vocabulary—it doesn’t work. I know this may be hard to swallow but your best response to a question from the press would start with the words “I am glad you asked that”.

Talk to them if you can. Explore options. Depolarise. Personalise and listen. Get them on the phone. Offer to meet with them, invite them in. Your office is best, but if they won’t come to see you offer to meet at some neutral place. Your task is to try and deflate their ballon and to get direct information about what is motivating them, how serious they are, what they would consider to be a success.

Do good research, even to the point of hiring a private detective, get to know your attacker so you can find potential common ground. Let me emphasise the point is not to dig up dirt but to fulfill your biggest need. Which is to stay on the green if you were there and to get on the green if you were not.

Principals of Confrontation
— Attacks can come despite good work and presentation.
— Avoid at all costs the zero sum game, where one side wins only at the expense of the other.
— The goal of some attacking groups is the conflict itself.
— When conflict resolution is not possible, reposition the opposition.
— Involving a third party depolarises.
— Response to a high profile attack should usually be high profile.
— To minimise the coopting and alienation of stake holders they must be aggressively informed.
— Key disarming traits are openness to dialogue and commitment to public interest principals.
— Resolution means the sorting of multiple options to satisfy mutual interests.

A note on where activism is headed: “expect them to be less polite”. Tony Leigton, Critical Trends in the Environment.
The full text is available from Car Busters.
 

Following The Piper of Bogota

Ivana Jakubkova

You must have heard the story—the Pied Piper makes rats leave the town of Hamelin and takes children into a better world. Well, in the case of Bogotá, the Piper pushes cars out of the city and no children have to leave because the city itself becomes a better place...

   “The goal is to restore what was once a city that invited children, teenagers, adults and the elderly to live happily as members of the community and enjoy the advantages it has to offer...The city materialises on the pavement: that public turf constituting the space/boundary between the street—the domain of vehicles—and buildings—the private domain...This is a question of expanding and reclaiming pedestrian areas that have been invaded and essentially privatised for a variety of individual activities, but mostly as parking space.”
   This enlightened quote comes not from a radical transport journal but, surprisingly, straight from the Economic and Social Development and Public Works Plan for Santa Fe de Bogotá: 1998-2001. The city is implementing this plan, which is “designed to change lives of Bogotá’s population in a profound way...[and] stimulate social, cultural and economic progress.” Economic progress in con-junction with “environmental policies and strategies [which] will be adapted to ensure the sort of sustainable growth and development that guarantees a better quality of life and preserves natural resources and strategic ecosystems, as part of a long-term perspective.”
In a world in which so-called developed nations are struggling to incorporate the concept of sustainability in their legislation, Columbia, a country facing economic crisis, fighting drug wars and plagued by corruption, is just doing it. Its plan sets seven priorities and suggests ways of implementing them, and has City Council approval.
   All the priorities aim at enhancing and reviving community life in the city and helping the poorest take part in it, e.g. the first priority ‘Ending Social Exclusion’ is defined as to “improve living conditions for people in sub-standard neighbourhoods where public facilities and social services are in short supply.” However, most related to the interests of Car Busters is the priority of ‘Mobility’ where the aim is to “establish transpor-tation systems that reduce travel time and provide decent, comfortable and efficient service that is respectful of the environment and the urban landscape.”
   In other words the plan is to develop an integrated public transport system which should cater for the needs of the majority of Bogotános with a huge fleet of buses, taxis and bike lanes. All this is accompanied with progressive restrictions on private car use which should culminate in 2015 with a total ban in the centre during peak hours, which the citizens of Bogotá approved of in a referendum last October.

The Proceedings
Now you might say, “well, this might be a very nice plan but nice plans usually don’t work out so easily.” And you’d be right. Bogotá’s plan is so ambitious that it can seem unlikely to be completed: especially as it aims to provide non-profit making public facilities, like libraries, parks, medical centres and sewers.
   Some proposed projects may have to be abandoned or altered—the under-ground metro system idea has already been cancelled, because the first line would not be finished any time soon, it would cost millions of dollars and would only serve about 10 percent of Bogotá’s population. Therefore, the emphasis in transportation is on buses and bicycles, with the aim to reach a similar level of bicycle usage as exists in Denmark or the Netherlands.
   So, the plan is ambitious and will be difficult, but work has started and there are already results. Out of 300 km of bicycle lanes to be built by the end of this year, 110 km have been finished. So far the number of everyday cyclists has increased from 0.5 percent in 1997 to 4 percent in 1999 and is expected to rise to 30 percent by 2005.
   On December 4, 2000 the first part of the TransMilenio bus system was inaugurated—it consists of 41 km in three separate bus lanes and 470 buses, each capable of carrying 160 people. The capacity of the system is now 660,000 passengers per day and the average speed of public transport has increased from 10 kph to 25 kph. By 2015 there should be 22 lanes, 6,000 buses and five million journeys performed every day.
   The emphasis on reallocating the space taken away from cars and transforming it for public use is also materialising. Currently the construction and renovation of 1,420 parks, public transport stations and avenues is taking place all over the city. These public spaces are being built with a concern for the needs of children, the elderly and handicapped, and will be planted with trees and strictly limit space for vehicles.
   The use of private cars is being discouraged by various means. There is an odd/even day system which cuts the number of vehicles driving round the city by 40 percent. Fines for breaking the rules are fairly high—from US$11 if it’s paid within three days, up to US$45 if the delay is more than ten days. In a country whose per capita domestic product is US$3,300, these are large sums of money. Also, parking fees in public zones have increased by 100 percent and the price of gasoline is set to increase by 20 percent each year.

The Man Behind the Plan
Persuading seven million citizens that if they have a car, they should use it less or not at all, is not easy in a city with a reputation for poor and dangerous public transport. Persuading opposition politicians and other decision makers that turning your city into a construction site for pedestrian paths and footbridges, massive traffic calming schemes and bike lanes, and performing strict parking control and even/odd car restraint days is the right way to go, is even more difficult. So, how has Bogotá’s mayor changed perceptions, and even persuaded the citizens to act differently to the rest of the world, and not take a car free day as a one-off event but the beginning of a new, more sustainable era of the city?
   Enrique Peñalosa achieved this, first and foremost, through devotion to his revolutionary ideas. Surrounded by a team of mostly young consultants, he started implementing the Development Plan and thinking about ways of persuading the citizens of the importance of the changes. He decided to follow the example of European car free days and teamed up with EcoPlan and the Commons to start a massive campaign to make it happen.
   On February 1, 2000 there was a press conference for both national and international media, at which the Mayor announced the Car Free Day on February 24, 2000. Then the marathon of interviews started—the Mayor and other members of the Council went on radio and TV programmes to explain the reasons for holding a car free day and its benefits;  two TV commercials explained the idea and invited citizens to join in; there were advertisements on various radio stations, and in the streets, posters were put up and flyers distributed all round the city; a web site was set up containing all necessary information and a link to the Commons’ web site, which helped to gain international support.
The international audience played a significant role: about a hundred important people, including transport planners and mayors of major cities, wrote letters expressing their support, which made Bogotanos proud of their city and the event. Two days before the Car Free Day or “Un dia sin mi coche en Bogota: Imaginemos una nueva ciudad,” Vincent Jacques Le-Seigneur, advisor to the French Minister Voynet, Daniel De Rougerie, Deputy Mayor of Lille (France) and Bertrand Calpini, a NASA expert, arrived in Bogota and gave interviews for the most important media in Colombia, which helped to make people aware of the global significance of the event.
   One day before the main newspaper El Tiempo featured a special supplement on the Car Free Day.
   Various interest groups, like merchants’ or taxi drivers’ asso-ciations were also contacted and asked for support, and on the day 13 Cabinet members visited 11 schools and two universities to explain why it was necessary to have a car free day.
   Of course, there was much opposition to the Car Free Day, who also used the media extensively. Businesses feared that their profits would decrease. Unfortunately, they were right—only seven percent of retailers reported an increase in sales while 73 percent reported a decrease. However, 43 percent of the surveyed retailers said that they would agree with another car free day.
   Although not everything went as imagined on the day, it was a damned good step forward towards sustainable cities which deserves to be noticed. And it has been: in June 2000 Peñalosa and the city of Bogotá, the Commons and EcoPlan were awarded the Stockholm Challenge Award in the category of Environment, for creating a model improving the quality of life of citizens and the environment, which other cities could follow.
   Now it’s time more people found out. That’s why you’re reading this article and you also have the opportunity to learn even more from and about one of the main protagonists—the ex-mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa, in an exclusive interview.

Is That It?
In January 2001, Peñalosa had to hand over his office to a newly elected mayor. One might fear that this would be the end of all reforms and car free days in Bogotá but the new mayor promised immediately after being elected to continue implementing the ambitious plans of his predecessor.
   And February 1 saw another successful Car Free Day in Bogotá, this time entitled “Sin mi carro en Bogotá: Para que la democracia ruede” or “Let the Democracy Roll On.” On the same day there was a Critical Mass going through the third largest city of Colombia, Cali, demanding car free days there. The city officials seem to be in favour of this proposal...

Easy to Follow?
Bogotá is the first ever example of how a “third world” (or first world) city could develop a more sustainable life. It may sound like the change has been pushed on Bogotanos from above, but effective education (countering the usual corporate advertising) has shown the citizens how they can benefit from the changes, and they have lent their full support, as the refe-rendum indicates.
   But is it an example that can be exported? Bogotá’s level of motori-sation is nowhere near as high as in Europe or America—it must be easier to give up something you’ve never had. Today there are only 134 cars for every 1000 inhabitants in Bogotá while the average number in Europe is more than 600, and only 12 of every 100 Bogotános use their car every day to commute. Due to its climate it’s easier to promote bicycle use as it’s always warm enough. Then the plan—it’s not focused on a single, most pressing issue as it stood alone, but views problems from more perspectives and looks for complex solutions.
   All these are advantages of Bogotá, but it has its share of disadvantages. So, as we say in Czech, you can “smack the officials’ head with Bogotá” and to anyone who says that restricting private car use equals restricting citizens’ freedom, reply “if they could do a city-wide car free day in Bogotá, where they have no underground, only rickety, old, smoke belching buses and taxis, where people commute on average eight km a day, why the hell couldn’t we do it here in...Prague, let’s say.” When it comes to transforming car free days from an activists’ picnic to a commitment to a sustainable city approved by the Council, the first step is educating your authorities—Lesson 1: Bogotá. The next lessons then could be on Zurich or Krakow and their anti-car initiatives. Or, who knows, perhaps even your town?

   The article and interview would have been much more difficult, or even impossible to produce without the invaluable help of Oscar Edmundo Diaz, Peñalosa’s assistant, who  provided us with an amazing amount of resources, and Eric Britton from EcoPlan. I thank them both very much for their assistance and all of the photographs which were taken on the Car Free Day.
You can find out more about Bogotá at <www.sinmicarroenbogota.org> where you can also download the plan “For Bogotá We Want” (both in Spanish and English), and more on car free days in general as well as the Bogotá’s at the web site <www.ecoplan.org>. If you do not have regular, or any, access to the Internet, Car Busters can send you all the downloaded materials for a little donation towards the cost of postage.

[Ed. Note: By the way, “a proposal will be presented to the City Council for a drastic cutback in permission for outdoor advertising and the adoption of regu-lations calling for billboards and signs to be placed in a way that is more respectful of the city and its people...” Bogotá’s Plan, Chapter III, The City on a Human Scale—ain’t this nice?]
 

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PIPER

Enrique Peñalosa Londonera is the man who triggered off the amazing changes in Santa Fe de Bogotá, Colombia. In this exclusive interview the ex-mayor reveals his motivations, dreams and fears.

CB: What was your inspiration for trying to transform Bogotá’s transportation system?
Transportation is a counter inductive issue. Normally, more economic development means progress: better education, health, and recreation. But transportation problems tend to worsen as people get richer and the number of cars grows. In the United States, time lost in traffic jams doubles every five years. In Bogotá, 80 percent of the population transports using buses. I thought we could avoid some errors before we became richer. I was always impressed by the importance of bicycles in the Netherlands and Denmark; and by the bus system in Curitiba [Brazil]. Bogotá had an important Sunday cycling tradition, and good weather. I thought we could create our own model and be happier.

CB: Who was the most obstructive or difficult to win over group before the Car Free Day?— politicians, business men, an interest group, etc. And what compromise did you have to make in order that the Car Free Day could happen?
There were some very powerful journalists radically against the idea. The merchants’ association was also very adamantly against the idea. This was a few months before the Car Free Day. I offered to hold the car free day only if opinion polls showed there was majority support. Happily, polls found a 60 percent plus support for it. Once it was held, support grew even more.

CB: The changes in Bogotá have been spearheaded by your personal commitment and energy. In the absence of your leadership, do you think the transformation, as per the referendum, will go ahead as planned or be abandoned or significantly weakened?
My three-year term as mayor ended on January 1, 2001. I am hopeful that the city will continue to advance towards the vision we proposed, but certainly it will not be easy. The mayor who is now in charge supports the vision and could even accelerate the advance towards it in some cases. We have interesting things happening in Bogotá. For example, every Sunday, we close 120 km of main arteries to all vehicles for seven hours. Between 1.5 and 2 million people come out to the street to be together, ride bicycles, walk, jog, do aerobics: every Sunday.

CB: Could you describe your dream city of the future?
I dream of a dense city, with 200 plus inhabitants per hectare, with as many square metres of pedestrian street space as car street space. In that city, with many trees and parks, the majority of people will move about in transit systems, or bicycles; a few will use taxis. Cars would be used for out-of-town trips, and most would be rented cars. The city would be surrounded by a green belt. There would be many libraries and music and dance spectacles in parks. There would be an intense cultural life and children would roam free, under the care of all. Children would have wonderful nurseries and schools, and would go frequently to the countryside surrounding the city. There would be many wonderful bicycle paths and pedestrian paths through the mountains, forests and farmland around the city.

CB: What will you do now your term as mayor is ended? [and (when) will you run for President of Colombia?]
I will be a “visiting scholar” at New York University, writing a book about a new sustainable and happier city model. And I will be spending lots of time with my wife and two children, something I could not do as a mayor. Perhaps I will run for President of Colombia but not in the next election in 2002, but in 2006. It is interesting to note that Congress is passing a Constitutional reform banning mayors from running for Congress or the Presidency before two years after their term ends.

CB: When nothing seems to be working, you are exhausted and everyone is an opponent, what keeps you going?
One’s dreams are a powerful stimuli and motivation. When I am with children, especially poor children, it is very clear to me that all the efforts, risks, and pain are worth it. There also are good friends who help very much. I was almost impeached for getting cars off the sidewalks of Bogotá. I did not stop or slow our efforts because I was not as interested in being mayor as in getting cars off pedestrian spaces. Unfortunately, there are still thousands of cars on Bogotá’s sidewalks! Happily, we also won a few. For example, a 17 km long and 12 meter wide pedestrian street, lined with trees, lamp lights and benches is nearing completion. We also built or left well underway more than 300 km of bike paths. When circumstances were very difficult and the world seemed to be against us, I also prayed as I woke up and asked God to help get through the day.

CB: Do your friends and family all think you are ‘loco’ or do they support your vision?
There have been times when even friends and team members thought we should let go and make concessions, mainly to the car. But luckily, we now have an even larger group which supports the vision. Friends and family have been and are extremely important, crucial, essential.

CB: International finance institutions such as the World Bank and IMF are being criticised for structural adjustment pro-grammes which cut social spending to facilitate loan repayments. Have you encountered any such pressures not to fund public and sustainable transport projects such as the TransMilenio or bicycle lanes?
Luckily we have not really depended upon the World Bank or similar institutions for our projects. The World Bank financed a small part of the TransMilenio project. At World Bank Transportation experts’ forums I have attended, experts tend to think we are not realistic. The fact is that while there are interesting things happening in Bogotá, we are very far from being a model for anything. I do not think that they would oppose financing TransMilenio or bicycle paths. But it would be wonderful if we could get non-refundable funds for building more pedestrian spaces.

CB: The damage of car culture goes beyond pollution from the car itself. What are your views regarding oil drilling (by multinational corporations) in Columbia, with its attendant environmental and occasional human rights abuse? Do you support the U’wa in their struggle with Occidental Petroleum?
I do not support the U’was’ struggle, which to a large degree is manipulated by guerrillas which inflict a lot of senseless pain to our society. U’was are Colombians like any other. There are many very poor Colombian children and we need the oil resources in order to provide treated water, sewage systems, schools, parks, etc.

CB: Have you ever feared assassination or experienced an irresistible bribery attempt by the U.S. military or CIA at the behest of Ford, General Motors or Skoda?!
I have not experienced bribery attempts by car makers or the CIA! But unfortunately, I have been often under serious threat of assassination, as other Colombian politicians. Guerrillas, right wing anti-guerrilla groups and other nuts, are quite willing to murder in Colombia.
 

Pie-Action

THE POLITICAL PIE

Revolution is about doing things out of the ordinary.

Pie throwing embraces so many beautiful  aspects of humanity it’s strange it doesn’t happen everyday. First of all there’s the great video footage. The look on the victim’s face is unique, unreproducable in a script or on a set. Do they taste the pie? Does the sweet flavour complicate their outrage? Most news presenters, and a nation lapping it up, are surprised and shocked. It is proclaimed as violent, although in a time when it was “entertainment,” at the turn of the 20th century, similar acts of propaganda by deed were more likely to be bombs. Violent indeed.
   Second, it is merely the act of a clown. That lovable self abusive humour merchant. It’s funny to watch. Despite your “outrage,” deep  down you see the humour, yeah? A little pie never hurt anybody. It follows in the tradition of the larrikin.
   Third, it’s pleasant to be again reminded we are merely monkeys. We are all human, even the richest and most powerful. You could be forgiven for believing that these people are somehow untouchable, special, above or separate from us.
   This uprising has its roots in the belief that our planet is not dying, it is being killed; and the ones doing the killing have names and faces.
   The revolution in Chiapas against neoliberalism and globalisation, the struggle for “tierra y libertad,” has influenced the Biotic Baking Brigade profoundly. As Marcos and others have demonstrated so effectively, in today’s world of ecological and social meltdown, we all live in Chiapas. But the Zapatistas have encouraged us to bring zapatismo to our own communities, and we have done what we can to follow through on that. In other words: think globally, act locally...and when the likes of Shapiro and Watson came to our home territories, we pied the polluting lollies.
   The great moments of revolutionary history have all been enormous popular festivals—the storming of the Bastille, the uprisings of 1848, the Paris Commune, the revolutions of 1917-19, Paris ’68. Conver-sely, popular festivities have always been looked on by the authorities as a problem, whether they have banned, tolerated or semi-institutionalised them. Why does power fear free celebration? Could it be something to do with the utopian urges which seize a crowd becoming aware of its own power? From the middle ages onwards the carnival has offered glimpses of the world turned upside down, a topsy turvy universe free of toil, suffering and inequality.
Carnival celebrates temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and the established order; it marks the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions. Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people. Ultimately it is in the streets that power must be dissolved: for the streets where daily life is endured, suffered and eroded, and where power is confronted and fought, must be turned into the domain where daily life is enjoyed, created and nourished.
- Agent Geek Sorbet

Pie-rect Action
The attacker mingles with the crowd, weapon in hand, waiting to pounce. As his victim approaches he edges forward slightly, body tense, one eye on the security guards, the other on his victim’s face. Now his target is alongside and, with a defiant yell, the attacker strikes, lunging forward, arm raised. For a moment the world seems to stand still, then the weapon makes contact and splat!
   Whipped cream showers everywhere, there is a strong smell of vanilla, another world leader falls prey to a cream tart. Over the last few years an increasing number of politicians, celebrities and industrialists have been subjected to cream pie attacks.
   The attacks have taken place throughout the world, and claimed such illustrious victims as Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, former European Commission President Jacques Delors and Dutch Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm, who was last year felled by an organic banana pie at the opening of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.
   Most recently Frank Loy, the United States’ chief negotiator at the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in The Hague, the Netherlands, had a pastry pushed into his face by an environmental campaigner protesting  U.S. reluctance to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
   “It’s essentially a form of democratic anarcho-populist politics,” explains Dr. Rodney Barker, Reader in Government at the London School of Economics. “What it’s doing is saying that those who are taken incredibly seriously both by them-selves and the media deserve to be knocked down a peg or two. “It’s about pointing out to the general public that the emperor doesn’t have as many clothes as he thinks he does.”
   A whole network of mainly left-wing pie-wielding activist organisations now exists around the globe, intent on “flanning” those in positions of power and influence. Among the most active are The Biotic Baking Brigade and Mad Anarchist Bakers’ League in the U.S., The Meringue Marauders in Canada, T.A.A.R.T. in Holland and People Insurgent Everywhere (PIE) in the U.K.

Piestory
Although history records numerous incidents of objects being thrown at public figures—as early as the first century AD Roman chroniclers were describing how the Emperor Nero was pelted with onions in the Colosseum—the use of the cream pie as a means of political protest is a relatively recent phenomenon.
   “In the past people have tended to express themselves by throwing eggs, vegetables or rotten cats,” says Barker. “That can be harmful, however. The whole thing about cream pies is that allows you to make your point without actually hurting anybody.”
   Two figures have been especially prominent in the rise of confectionery as an instrument of political protest. In the U.S. left-wing activist Aron Kay has been dubbed “The Pieman” for a whole series of attacks stretching across almost three decades, and including such victims as right-wing political commentator William F. Buckley, former CIA director William Colby and former New York Mayor Abe Beame.
In Belgium, meanwhile, Noel Godin, the “Godfather of the Cream Pie,” has, since 1969, been engaged in what he describes as a “cream crusade” against “the great and the wicked.”  During that time his International Patisserie Brigade has “entarted” everyone from New Wave film director Jean-Luc Godard to Bill Gates.
   Godin and his fellow pie-throwers plan their attacks meticulously, exchanging information on the move-ment of prominent figures via the Internet and employing sophisticated diversionary tactics to outwit security guards.
   A rudimentary “pie-wielders’ code” has developed, with activists adhering to certain basic rules of engagement: the pie must be “deposited lovingly” rather than simply thrown, attackers should try to wear some sort of silly costume, the attack should humiliate, but not injure.
“We only use the finest patisserie,” Godin told Britain’s Observer newspaper, “Ordered at the last minute from small local bakers. Quality is everything.”
   Whether such attacks actually have any effect on the world’s decision makers, other than adding to their dry cleaning bill, is doubtful. An increasing number of people, however, are seeing the cream pie as a useful means of venting their frustration and making a political point.
 “It might not have any direct effect on a politician’s policies,” admitted a spokesperson for Dutch flan activists T.A.A.R.T. “What it does do is bring issues to the notice of the general public.” There are few better ways of getting your voice heard than by slapping a big soggy pie in someone’s face.

Great Pie-ing Moments
You’ve probably heard it already, but just one more time because it was a  peach of a pieing at the Den Haag Climate Talks, November 2000. Two women infiltrated the U.S. Delegation Press Conference. One armed with a pie, and the other with a mega-rant... As Frank  Loy, head of the U.S. Delegation, began to peddle his usual bollox, Agent Cherry Pie scooped a rather mushy black forest gateaux (stolen) out of her bag,  leapt forward from her front-row seat and planted it right in his  face. Immediately Agent Sushi jumped up onto her chair and started ranting. Both Agents managed to get out the door, walk past the running cops and escape into the night. Frank Loy, meanwhile, looked like a total mess, with pie exploded all over his face. He tried to scrape his dignity, managed a few words and then cancelled the press conference.
   Lessons to learn from this action: it is really easy! You can do it. Just get a smart suit, a pie, think up a rant, and away you go. Keep believing you can get away with it. People are so shocked that you can use the confusion to your advantage to get away. Keep ranting and they will be desperate to get you out of their precious private space, and may throw you out, and then you can try and escape.
Many thanks to all the Piers, particuarly the BBB, for this article.

Some Pietry
Say it with pies, sometimes it’s
hard to find the words.
although we search for hours;
and so, on those occasions,
we might’ say it with flowers
—our tenderer emotions,
by people felt, and possums,
expressed in the universal
language of blossoms.
But how do you respond to
cover-ups and outright lies?
fortunately there is a way
—say it with pies!
Instead of trying to decide
which flower would be more thrilling,
you’re standing there deciding
between a choice of filling;
should it be apple, mincemeat, or
a cream pie?
Here’s your chance to be creative and come up with a dream pie.
Satisfaction’s in the baking, and sheer joy when it flies;
it’s a noble undertaking
—SAY IT WITH PIES.
 

OPERATION  DESSERT STORM

CALL TO ACTION
From April 1 (April Foold‘s Day) till May 1 (May Day)
Dear purveyors of sweet humility everywhere. The time is baked for the pie throwing resurgence to rise together, let’s:

GLOBALISE THE PIE...
A global month of action

Tofu cream must be as global as capital.
Following on the fine tradition of the Biotic Baking Brigade and the many individuals who have inspired us all with pies in the faces of Bill Gates, Milton Freidman, Steve Bracks et al. We call on you to partake in Operation Dessert Storm. What better way to draw attention to the often faceless leaders of the corporate world, shameful journalists, dodgy politicians and anyone who deserves a face full of dissent. The “global movement” is often mis-represented in the mainstream media. You can’t misrepresent a face full of cream. It sends a clear message to the recipient and the media that what these people are doing is ridiculous and that you are prepared to let them know it—and have some fun while doing it!
   The pie is the great equaliser. How many times have you wanted to see whipped cream smeared on John Howard’s glasses or see Tony Blair choking on a strawberry? Now is your chance.

MOBILISE EN MASSE AND PIE!
<www.dessertstorm.org>
 
 

Kids 'n' Cars

DEVELOPING THE “GENERATION NEXT” OF AUTO ADDICTS

Debbie Waters

Cars steal play space, pollute, injure and kill. Yet by thirteen, children are addicted to cars—Thirteen.
They can’t drive, they can’t even apply for a license, but they are addicted to autos.
How does this happen?

To begin at the beginning, what impact do cars have on the life of a child? Ask your government, and you will get contradictory responses—on the one hand there are government sponsored adverts showing the danger of cars. In Britain, a commercial showed the view from the driver’s seat as a car passes down an inner-city street, when suddenly a child runs into the road. The screen goes dark as there is a screech of brakes. “Kill your speed” it says—or kill a child. The danger of cars is emphatically proclaimed. And it is not a false proclamation—accidents to child pedestrians account for 34 percent of all injury deaths in childhood.
Yet, contradictorily, reassuring statistics are also issued. In 1990, the British government said, “over the last quarter of a century, Britain’s roads have become much safer. Road accidents have fallen by almost 20 percent since the mid 1960s; the number of deaths is down by one third.” Endless similar statistics can be found, all proving that the roads are becoming steadily safer for children. But are they safer, or are they   infinately more dangerous?
The number of cars on the road is such that children now are forbidden to play near them, they are forbidden to cross the street alone, they are not allowed to go unattended to school. Between 1971 and 1990, the number of children allowed to go on their own to places other than school (a friend’s house, the park, the shops etc.) halved. The freedom and independence of children and their opportunities for adventure are vastly curtailed by the car.
“When my mum was little she was allowed to go to the park and to the shop by herself. We can’t go by ourselves because there’s too much traffic…Mum could stay on the road with her friends because there were not too many cars on the road…Mum and dad could walk at night and play on the road. I cannot because it is dangerous.” [Child aged 9,  Engwicht, Human Rights and the Car.]
Nowhere does the curtailed freedom become more apparent than in the journey to school. Between 1971 and 1990 the percentage of 7-8 year old children allowed to travel to school alone dropped from 80 to just 9 percent.
Instead of free and independent movement, children are being escorted—increasingly so, by car. Three and a half times more children are driven to school now than in 1971. In the U.S., capital of car culture, fewer than one in eight students walk or ride a bike to school.
“I can remember clearly the journeys I made to and from school because they were so tremendously exciting…The excitement centred around my new tricycle. I rode to school on it everyday with my eldest sister riding on hers. No grown-ups came with us and I can remember, oh so vividly, how the two of us used to go racing at enormous tricycle speeds down the middle of the road.
“All this, you must realise, was in the good old days when the sight of a motor car was an event and it was quite safe for tiny children to go tricycling and whooping their way to school in the centre of the highway…” [Roald Dahl’s account of his childhood in Glamorgan, aged six, in 1922.]
Parents today cannot risk allowing their children this freedom and excitement. They accompany their kids because they fear traffic, and they fear their children will be molested. They are both, essent-ially, the same. An increase in traffic leads to a decrease in street life [see Car Busters no. 10 for more detail] and an increase in the number of strangers outside the home. As a result, the fear of molestation increases.
So, as a direct result of the car, children have lost play space—the street—they have lost independence, and they have lost use of a significant portion of the day, as parents are particularly wary of allowing children to leave home after dark. Girls are especially restricted by “stranger danger” and parental fear  of attack.
Yet parents too suffer; the burden of escorting takes freedom from both child and parent.
“She plays in our garden on her own and sometimes she rides her bike on her own when there is nobody about, but she is always watched...If I felt it was safe, I’d let her play out there and do what I have do to, but you can’t really.” [Improvements in Child Pedestrian Safety: At What Cost? Health Education Journal (1998) 57.]

The Addiction
But if the car takes so much away from children, why are they becoming addicted? From where comes the addiction?
The car has stolen their freedom, but it is also their carriage into the outside world. As parents drive their children to and from school, to and from the shops, to and from their grandparents’ house, to and from the park, so a child learns by example. Cars are indispensable. Our auto-addiction becomes their auto-addiction before we even realise they are watching. Car addiction begins in the passenger seat.

Toys, Games and Children’s TV
When cars have stolen their play space, children have to play inside the home. Exposure to television watching increases. Exposure to the games, gimmicks, comp-uter games and modern day techno-toys increases. What impact do these games and TV programmes have?
Children like toys that reflect their environment—a toy car is popular because they see adults use cars. But does playing with the toy car add to a child’s auto-addiction, or simply reflect it? In the 1980s, in England and the U.S., con-cerned parents stopped buying toy guns for their children. Should those parents also be avoiding toy cars? Or computer games in which cars race at high speeds through twisting landscapes? Or switching off the television when a show includes cars? (And turning it on for Thomas the Tank Engine?)
I can prove nothing, you understand, this is just a question, but do these games and TV programmes add to your child’s car addiction? When adoration of the car is as powerful as this moment when Toad first sees an automobile, in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, can a child remain impervious?
‘“Glorious, stirring sight!” murmured Toad, never offering to move. “The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! Here today—in next week tomorrow! Villages skipped, towns and cities jumped—always somebody else’s horizon! O bliss! O poop-poop! O my! O my!”’
If I remember some of the programmes I watched as a child, what do I see? The Wacky Races, Herbie, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Goofy, the Transformers—both car and robot. Just the beginning of a seemingly endless list of adorable cars, or adorable characters often seen in a car. And it doesn’t stop there, from childhood to adulthood we are emersed in a popular culture that celebrates and adores the car.
“You don’t even need to be a driver to be touched by cars. There are cult road movies; innumerable pop songs; collectors’ magazines; Noddy models and Postman Pat everythings; drive-in McDonalds and drive-in cinemas; novels and stories about cars; urban myths; audiobooks; Grand prix racing on the box; pictures; ornaments; and Dinky toys.” [Nicola Baird, The Estate We’re In]
Does it have an impact? Hard to say. After all, as children we also watched Black Beauty gallop across the hills. But which images resonate more for today’s car-dependent (sub)urban children?

The Built Environment
The children of today are city dwellers. How frequently do they walk in a forest and harvest wild mushrooms compared to how frequently they are driven to the supermarket? How often do they swim in a lake or sleep in a cave, compared to how often they swim in a heated pool then go home to watch television?
According to Adbusters, the average person in today’s society can identify fewer than 10 plants compared to over 1000 corporate logos. And children are even more exposed to the advertising and less exposed to nature than we were. Even in cities where there is “nature” it is of a truly sanitised kind. An urban gardening collective, Green Loops, in Liverpool, England, wanted to create a community garden in which children could learn more about nature, plants, the environment—but local council regulations insisted they could not have any plants with thorns on them, as children might get hurt. So, there is no chance they could ever pick and eat a wild blackberry, then.
And in such an urban environment, where cars are always visible and used, where popular culture constantly reinforces the message that cars are good, and with so little exposure to the nature these vehicles destroy, is it a wonder kids become car addicts? The car is normal, everyday, essential. Mummy never takes me anywhere without it.

The Symbolism of the Car
Even if you dispute the concept of TV programmes fuelling your child’s car addiction, when the impact of cars has limited children to the home there is no doubt they become a “trapped” audience to the advertising of the car industry. As reported in Car Busters no. 10, German car manufacturer Porsche AG has changed its marketing strategy in the U.S. to target just these children—children from six to ten, “our future buyers.”
Symbolic Freedom: The impact of the car takes away their freedom, but the marketing image of the car is as the giver of freedom. Having targeted children in their add campaign Porsche asked children to draw their dream car. “Dream cars that have been drawn so far depict long windy roads, setting suns, mountains and trees,” said Porsche’s president. The dream is the car, but it is for the freedom. So teenagers long for their first car to give them the independence they have been denied throughout childhood because of the car.
The result? Well, since 1922 the car accident related deathrate for 15 to 19 year olds has increased fourfold, as teenagers run out to get their own piece of the action.
Symbolic Dominance: What else does the car symbolise? Dominance over nature.
Children are city dwellers, their exposure to nature is sanitised. Do they fear the wild? I am reminded of a friend I had in London. Born and bred in the midst of the city, she confessed to me a fear of wide open spaces—never would she visit the African Savannah—there was too much to fear in the emptiness, the void. Is she alone? Or are our children growing up with the same disconnection from the wild? The car symbolises man’s dominance over nature, it makes that trip to Africa conceivable—snug in a 4x4.
”A great many things are going to change. We shall learn to be masters rather than servants of nature” [Henry Ford, 1922]
The car means safety, inviolability, power and dominance—over nature, but also over mankind.
Symbolic Power and Sexuality: Kids become teenagers, and teenagers seem pathologically designed to find acceptance, to find themselves, their power, their independence, their sex appeal, their adulthood, by whatever means possible. And in today’s consumerist culture, it’s hardly surprising they have so much faith that things can prove their being. So they dream of the car for the power, magnetism and sex-appeal it can bring. Their addiction is enhanced by the belief that a commodity can provide self-esteem. They are not alone. How can we expect children to grow up with contempt for the lies propagated by the car industry when some of our most prominent personalities lead by examples like this:
“‘Congratulations! You have won the chance to pay just 360,000 pounds for the car of your dreams.’ So said a letter sent last week to 350 of the world’s richest motorists…Although Jaguar is still building the prototype, more than 1,300 people from 40 countries put down a 50,000 pound deposit on the untested car; for every successful applicant there were three failures…
“One rock musician who has won an option on the car is Nick Mason, the drummer with Pink Floyd. Mason...said he would have been ‘suicidally depressed’ if he had been rejected by Jaguar.” [Ian Birrell, “Select Few Pounce on Jaguar Supercar,” Sunday Times, London, March 4, 1990]
The marketing image of the car assures sex-appeal, power, safety and dominance. And exposure to these lies, this symbolism, is increased by the fact car culture leaves children trapped at home watching it.
The effect is compounded in early teenage years by a sudden decrease in the appeal of bicycles. Over 40 percent of young children claim the bike as their preferred mode of travel to and from school, but as they reach their teenage years, suddenly the bike loses all appeal and peer group pressure begins to be exerted on those who do ride. Why? Well, the main factor, again, is the danger of the roads, which pushes children to cycle on the pavements instead. But there comes an age when to ride the pavement brings both adult disapproval and peer group scorn. As one 13 girl put it, “you would look like a prat riding up and down on a bike at our age”—cycling is childish, too risky and definitely not stylish.
In the style wars, the car promises glory and sex appeal at just the same age that the bike begins to appear foolish and stupid. Even though the teenagers are still too young to drive, they long for the adult world. They long for the car.
Even environmental awareness is not saving children from car addiction. Young children recognise the limitations placed on their play space by cars, and they are aware of their environmental impact—they can name pollution, accidents, emissions, breathing problems, acid rain and global warming as car eveils. But as they grow older they become more resigned to increasing levels of traffic, and they begin to recognise the value of car ownership: “there is going to be more and more of it [traffic] so you learn to live with it and get on”
“We all want cars in the future so we can’t stop current drivers if we want them.” [Kids, Cars and Conservation: children’sideas about the environmental impact of motor vehicles, International Journal of Science and Education, 1996, Vol 18, No. 3]
In our unemancipated, commodified world, our children become car addicts by the age of thirteen. They become addicts because they learn from our example, and when we spend our lives in cars they cannot conceive of a different way. They become car addicts because they live in cars from the earliest age, being transported from A to B. They become car addicts because they have no freedom and they long for it. They become car addicts because they have no power, and they long for it. They become car addicts because they believe the marketing they are forced to watch because they can no longer play outside. They become car addicts because there is no alternative in their lives. At the first opportunity they will buy their own.

“The [British Government] White Paper Roads for Prosperity, published on 18 May 1989, predicts an increase in traffic of 142 percent by the year 2025 if the economy grows at a rate of 3 percent per year until that time…an increase of 27.5 million vehicles…What would another 27.5 million vehicles look like?
“Traffic jams in these days are commonly measured in miles. Allowing 20 feet for each car (the recommended allowance for in-line parking), and assuming, conservatively, that the average size of the other vehicles (vans, lorries, buses and coaches, and motorcycles) is no larger than the average car, then another 27.5 million vehicles would form a queue 104,000 miles long. This could be accommodated, if stationary, on a new motorway stretching from London to Edinburgh—if it were 257 lanes wide.”
[John G.U. Adams, “Car Ownership forecasting: Pull the ladder up, or climb back down,” Traffic Engineering and Control, March 1990.]

6 Steps to Help Combat Your Child’s Auto Addiction
• Start early—read them Wolfgang Zuckermann’s Family Mouse Behind the Wheel repeatedly throughout childhood. And use you imagination and subvertise all stories to have a more ecological message.
• Stop driving your child to school: walk or ride a bike with them, or set up a “walking bus.” See Engwicht’s Street Reclaiming for more info.
• Join in the International Walk to School Day: <www.iwalktoschool.org>
• Campaign for safe spaces for both travel and play—safe walking and cycling routes, traffic calming, residential areas designed specifically to prohibit cars, more parks and green spaces, with wardens to ensure safety.
• Teach by example—the more you drive a car the more your children will want too. The more you ride a bike, the more your children will be mentally equipped to overcome peer group pressure to abandon their bikes for car addiction instead.
• Switch off the TV, shut out the advertising and get out of the house—show your kids life is not lived through a screen, be it a TV screen or a windscreen.
 

World News

ENGLAND

Making People Behave Like Cars
The pavements (sidewalks) are so cheek-to-jowl with Christmas shoppers that businesses on London’s Oxford Street want to fine pedestrians £10 for dawdling.
In the interest of commerce and British decorum, slowpokes on the mile-and-a-half-long street would be ticketed just like speeding drivers. In an ideal world there would not be any regulation. “But there are too many people and there is too little space,” says Rhona Harrison, a spokes-woman for Operation Tugboat, the campaign to segregate the pavements.
 Oxford Street is visited by more than 9 million tourists each year, and about 60,000 people work in the area. Local merchants have noted that it’s so crowded that people move at 1 mph (1.5 kph), compared with an estimated average pedestrian speed of 4 mph. Now they want each side of the street divided into two lanes, one with a minimum speed of 3 mph. The street would be patrolled by special marshals with speed cameras.
Anyone caught in the fast lane while reading maps, using a mobile  phone, or carrying bulky shopping bags would be liable to an on-the-spot fine. This, presumably, is after they have been pulled over into the slow lane for a reprimand.
The proposal, now under consideration by Westminster City Council, has received enthusiastic support from local residents and workers who say that they experience “pavement rage” at least once a day in the form of angry pushing or shoving.
“A fast lane would be jolly good, and I think the slow walkers should be told to get out of it,” says interior designer Rita Furzey, a longtime resident of a side street off the main drag. “If you just want to get from A to B, you have to duck and dive all  the time. It’s horrendous.”
– The Christian Science Monitor, December 2000

“Wear Day-Glow or Die”
Manchester’s Old Age Pensioners are being given fashion tips to cut the number of pensioners hit by cars.
Police say there have been more serious and fatal traffic collisions in the Kings Heath and Billesley area, and most involve elderly pedestrians. Now local bobby Caroline Evans is advising senior citizens in Brum to be smart and be seen.
“There has recently been an increase in road traffic collisions where, unfort-unately, elderly people have died trying to cross the road,” said Evans. “To stop this from happening we advise the public—especially the elderly—to wear a bright item of clothing or something fluorescent.”
“We don’t expect to see OAPs in those bright jackets that builders wear—even if it’s just the bands cyclists wear on their arms, it’s better than nothing.”
Jane Eason, from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, agreed. “It is always better to try and wear some-thing bright so drivers can make you out, like a brightly coloured or white coat.”
- Birmingham MetroNews, Nov. 2000
[Ed. Note: Birmingham police might do well to consult with genetic engineers: a scheme could be developed to make day-glow skin and hair an option for parents-to-be who consider the futures of their unborn children.]

CHAD

Oil’s Well in Chad
The President of Chad has received a $25 million bonus from oil companies for giving the go ahead for the World Bank funded Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline (CB’s #9). What a surprise! He has spent a lot of the money on the purchase of military equipment.
- SchNEWS

CZECH REPUBLIC

The Age of Ironies
Japan’s huge bicycle component manu-facturer Shimano is opening a plant in  Karviná, Moravia (northeastern Czech Republic).
Up until recently the area was not popular with industry due to a lack of highway infrastructure.
Bike manufacturers and sellers say even though the popularity of mountain bikes has waned, interest in bikes is increasing in the Czech Republic, thanks to growing incomes and changing lifestyles.
“People want to connect sport with enjoyment from nature and a nice environment,”said Radek Spalenka, a shop assistant at Prague’s Cycle 69 bike shop. Rising petrol prices are also a factor.
- The Prague Post, January 2001
[Ed. Note:The new motorway R 48, part of TransEuropean Multimodal Corridor VI, will link the Karviná plant to Austrian, Czech and Polish markets, but we at Car Busters are already on the phone telling Shimano that if they use trains to transport the goods and advertise the fact they will get good PR]

NIGERIA

More ViOILence
On 14 October, 2000, a group of fifty one youths approached the Tebidabaflow station, operated by the Nigerian Agip Oil Company Ltd (NAOC) near Olugbobiri, Bayelsa State, in three speedboats.
According to information gathered by local human rights organisations, and interviews with eyewitnesses carried out by Human Rights Watch three weeks later, their intention was to enter the flow station and close down production, in order to protest the failure of NAOC to complete certain agreed projects in the Olugbobiri community to the satisfaction of the community. The youths were unarmed.
Soldiers and naval personnel posted at the flow station opened fire on the boats without warning, using both a machine gun and what were described by the youths present as “bombs,” presumably grenades. The youths dived into the water in order to escape, but eight were killed at the site, and another died later in hospital.
Several of the bodies were not immediately recovered. Sixteen were seriously injured, of which four were still in hospital at the beginning of the second week in November.
 - Human Rights Watch, Nov. 2000

PANAMA

“Fecal Mud Swamp” Imminent in Panama
Over the past two and a half years the Fundacion para el Desarrollo de la Libertad Ciudadana (Foundation for the Development of Citizen Liberty) has been trying to stop a project that they believe will cause irreversible damage in Panama Bay.
The project, consisting of the Corredor Sur toll road & the Punta Pacifica real estate development, is being built by the Mexican-based construction company ICA and financed by the World Bank Group’s private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation.
The Punta Pacifica project consists of filling in portions of Panama Bay in order to create islands upon which a luxury real estate development will be built. Independent hydrology experts from California-based Philip Williams & Associates have warned that this landfill could turn the coast of Panama Bay into a “fecal mud swamp.”
- Fundacion para el Desarrollo de la Libertad Ciudadana, November 2000
[Ed. Note: This project is at an important stage of development and the Fundacion is asking for immediate help. For more info e-mail <libertad@pty.com>.]

JAPAN

Government Ordered To Pay In Suit Over Highway Pollution
In a ruling that sent jitters through Japan’s bureaucracy, a court has ordered the government to compensate residents who suffered health problems caused by vehicle emissions from a nearby highway.
The ruling by the Nagoya district court in central Japan is expected to open floodgates to similar lawsuits in the world’s most densely populated nation, where a spider web of highways runs through heavily populated areas. During the trial, government lawyers argued that vehicle pollution in Nagoya was not a serious issue. They suggested that smoking or allergies could have caused the plaintiffs’ respiratory illnesses.
Lawyers for the residents, however, provided medical evidence that the number of chronic bronchial, asthma and emphy-sema cases had dramatically increased since the highway was con-structed.
The court acknowledged that industrial plant emissions and exhaust fumes from motor vehicles are related to respiratory diseases. It ruled that the government and its agencies must keep air pollution at acceptable levels for residents who live near highways. Yasuhisa Tamegai, the res-ident who spearheaded the case, said his first job is to “report to the families of those who have died since we started” the suit.
Independent lawyers said the case is significant because it recognises the
relationship between toxic vehicle and industrial emissions and personal health.
- Corporate Watch/Transnational Resource and Action Center, Nov. 2000

CHINA

Cars May be Banned From Central Hong Kong to Cut Pollution
Hong Kong plans to turn parts of its busy Central commercial district into traffic-free zones in a drive to improve its deteriorating air quality.
The proposal would see the closure of several major roads in Central to vehicles, and transport authorities have recommended limiting them to pedestrians only from later this year.
The plan would cover popular night-time districts Lan Kwai Fong and SoHo as well as part of Central’s busy Queen’s Road, and was discussed in the local district council this week.
Air pollution in Hong Kong has stirred much concern in recent years. On bad days, a thick blanket of choking haze shrouds the famous Victoria harbor, sharply reducing visibility. The air pollution index (API) can reach a very high level in dense districts of Central, Causeway Bay and Mongkok, with readings exceeding 140 in all three districts. The Hong Kong government issues a standard warning urging people with respiratory and heart problems to stay indoors whenever the index rises above 100.
The government has made repeated pledges to combat the problem. Last November, the 60 member legislature decided by majority to raise the fixed penalty on smoky vehicles from HK$450 (US$58) to HK$1,000 (US$128).
- Reuters, 8 January, 2001

UNITED STATES

Big Insurance Discounts for SUVs
State Farm, the USA’s biggest automobile insurer, unveiled a new pricing policy in November 2000 that offers hefty discounts to drivers of sport utility vehicles, vans and luxury cars. The company maintains that those vehicles are the safest for their occupants and have generated the fewest insurance claims.
Consumer groups labeled the move “a disaster.” “It’s the worst possible thing that an insurer can do,” said Dan Jacobson, consumer program director for the California Public Interest Research Group in Sacramento. “An SUV may protect the people inside it, but it does a heck of a lot of damage to anyone it hits.”
State Farm was at a loss to explain why a driver of a Honda Accord— arguably one of the safer cars on the road—should be seen as a greater insurance risk than a driver of a Chevrolet Suburban SUV, which faces a greater danger of rollovers and can inflict maximum damage on other vehicles in the event of an accident. In essence, State Farm is cutting premiums by up to 40 percent for vehicles that in the past have generated the fewest injury claims for occupants. Jamie Court, executive director of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Santa Monica, California, dismissed the new pricing plan as “a sheer marketing ploy to pull in high-end customers.”
The California Public Interest Research Group said the insurer was mistakenly associating the number of claims filed with a vehicle’s actual safety. “They think that the people who file the fewest claims must drive the safest cars…That’s absurd.”
State Farm called such criticism “a misunderstanding.”
“We think it’s going to help our policyholders in the long run,”they said. “It will reward people who drive safer cars.”
- San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 2000

CANADA

Investors Tiptoe Through PR Minefield in Sudan
Canada’s Talisman Energy has faced a barrage of criticism over its investment in the Sudanese oil industry. In response, it has developed humanitarian programs and promised to monitor human rights abuses. Its campaign, however, is unlikely to diminish criticism of companies investing there.
The company has been dragged through the bushes—to the point where the company was on the verge of facing Canadian government sanctions. Activists, claiming that investment fuels conflict and human rights abuses (particularly near the oil fields), have called on Talisman share-holders to pressure the company to pull out by threatening to divest their holdings in the company. However, responding to the recommendations of an independent report, Ottawa decided not to impose sanctions on Talisman.
Talisman has signed the Canadian government’s code of business ethics and hired PricewaterhouseCoopers to provide an independent audit of their annual Sudan reports.
- Environmental countries, 26 January, 2001
 

Climate Casinos

In 1997 the Kyoto Protocol bound governments in the developed world to reducing Greenhouse Gases (GHGs). A sense of optimism filled the air—the Kyoto Protocol wasn’t much but it was a start. Now three years later the U.N. climate talks appear to have been fuelled by broken promises and commitments, held to ransom by the global economic elite. The future of the world is looking bleak.

November 2000, delegates from all over the world, corporations and NGOs met in Den Haag to discuss  the growing climate crisis and to ratify the Kyoto Protocol created in Japan in 1997. The reality was very different, turning from climate talks into a trade fair with attendees jostling to get a piece of the market.
The talks failed because of growing disagreement between the E.U. and the U.S. over proposals to use forests and farmland as carbon dioxide (CO2) “sinks” to soak up emissions and account for some of America’s Kyoto targets. Now the superpowers of the world have reclined behind closed doors to finish off the final parts of the agreement, essentially carving out a new economic market whereby a carbon economy can exist and trading in pollution can commence. (See Car Busters 10 for more detail on carbon trading).
A massive hypocrisy existed within the Den Haag talks: delegations from developing countries spoke of unmitigated climate disaster if real change was not implemented soon: extreme weather events that will result in massive destruction of lives, property and capital. Yet governments and delegations were incapable of developing effective counter measures and imple-menting any real change.
Are we to be reassured by a possible breakthrough in the talks in the year 2001? Are future talks going to address the crux issues of climate change—the necessity for immediate reductions in carbon emissions, disaster management, the growing environmental refugee crisis or alternatives to our fossil fuel dependant society? Or have the six years of hard negotiation, compromise and failed talks that have dogged the Kyoto Protocol shown it to be a fundamentally flawed and futile piece of legislation?

The Real Issues
A recent report issued by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel of Scientists on Climate Change) shows an alarming increase in projected temperature rises—now estimated at six degrees Celsius within 100 years, double the previous expectation. The intensity and frequency of extreme weather events will also increase as a consequence of greenhouse gases emissions.
IPCC has argued that a cut of 60-70 percent in emissions is essential if climate change is to be averted. But statistics published by the E.U. commission show that total E.U. emissions for the years 1990-2010 will see a mere 1.4 percent reduction and acknowledge that it might be closer to zero. Way below the commitment of eight percent set by the Kyoto Protocol. The transport sector, responsible for over one third of total GHG emissions, has seen an increase of 15.3 percent. The International Energy Agency released a report in Den Haag which concludes that world emissions of carbon dioxide—the principal greenhouse gas— will rise by 60 percent over the period 1997-2010. In another report entitled “Collision Course,” the growth in emissions from transport, notably road and air, resulting from the world’s addiction to fossil fuelled economic growth, will cancel out any measures to reduce greenhouse gases. Despite these alarming statistics there was little evidence of these issues on the agenda in Den Haag, or a likelihood of them being discused at future climate talks.

Why?
Corporations and industry have a massive vested interest in being involved with climate change issues. “Just as the corporate sector has been one of the driving forces behind the movement towards free trade over the past 50 years,” says Rodney Chase, from the offices of BP Amoco, “so now I think the corporate sector can help develop the solutions to climate change.”
Rubbing their hands gleefully, the initial panic and reluctance of industry to act to avert climate catastrophe has been replaced by enthusiastic lobbying for the launch of the new emissions trading market. Industries have recognised that, there is massive profit to be made from cleaning up the mess caused by extreme weather occurrences, and the nuclear and biotech industries may have a whole new market by which to overcome distaste for their industries if they are approved of as means to provide the answers to carbon sequestion.
Financial institutions like the World Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development all serve to benefit from investment funds they have set up for emissions trading. “Over the past six years the World Bank has spent billions of dollars in developing countries on fossil fuel related projects,” argues Daphne Wysam in The Ecologist, “that will contribute to double the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by all the world’s countries in 1996. Now the bank hopes to profit from these very emissions by entering the market in emissions trading.”
Industry is also lobbying to ensure emissions reductions should be met only through voluntary commitments, arguing that fighting carbon dioxide emissions with mandatory legislation would lead to economic disaster. To date this has not yet been agreed by the Kyoto Protocol. However, a report released by the European Environment Bureau concludes that voluntary agreements between industry and the E.U. show no ambition, are of dubious legal quality, are undemocratic and are leading to long delays in the imple-mentation of action.

The USA
The pieing of Frank Loy, head of the U.S. delegation, at a press conference during the climate talks was widely and openly celebrated (well by us anyway). During the talks the U.S. had been accused of repeatedly stalling negotiations and backing the E.U. and G77 into a corner.
The U.S. produces a quarter of the worlds total carbon emissions and its inclusion in the climate talks is perceived as essential. But the U.S. is effec-tively trying to broker a deal that will see it meet the targets set by the Kyoto Protocol but not actually decrease their carbon emissions. Speculation is already running rife as to what the new Bush administration will make of the Kyoto protocol. New Republican senators have already begun calling for it to be rejected. Joe Barton, a leading U.S. energy law maker, said that international negotiations to work out the details of the treaty were proving fruitless: “it is never going to be in the interests of the American economy.” And Bush has never hesitated to express his categorical refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
 (Attempts to prise a quote out of the new Bush administration regarding their standpoint on the Kyoto Protocol proved futile, but if you want to try see the contacts page for the White House telephone number.)

Is It All Fucked Then?
Initial excitement post Kyoto has all but evaporated and disbelief now runs through a huge selection of environmental NGOs and lesser developed countries affected by climate change. “If governments continued to act irresponsibly as they have done this week,”said a spokesperson for Greenpeace shortly after the talks had finished, “the people from rich countries should prepare to build even bigger and wider dikes from which they can watch the rest of the world suffer and drown from climate change.”
Friends of the Earth were emotionally moved by the failure of the talks, “at the start of the talks, Dutch Environment Minister, Jan Pronk, warned the politicians of the public outrage that would result if they left Den Haag with no deal to fight climate change. After two weeks of waffle, that is exactly what happened. Nothing effective has been achieved. Man-made climate change will continue to get worse. People all over the world will lose lives, homes and jobs as a result. We will not forget or forgive those who wrecked these talks and put our planet in further danger. We will demand that those governments who back the Kyoto Treaty continue their programmes of action to fight climate change. And we will work to see that those Governments and politicians who betrayed it pay for their behaviour.”
“The feeling running through some of the mainstream NGOs,” says Bianca from the Climate Action Network, “is that COP6.5 is probably going to fail because the process has gone too far down the road and there is still no agreement and because of the change in the U.S. government.”
Despite this, other groups are more optimistic: Liam Slater from WWF acknowledged that, although COP6 was a setback, “the process will survive.” “No deal is better than a bad deal—hopefully follow-up negotiations can learn from the mistakes made at Den Haag and put a package in place that targets the real culprits of climate change, not just the easy political opinions.”
However, other activist groups believe that the official United Nations negotiations are failing to resolve the climate change crisis. Once such coalition, the Rising Tide Collective, insists that global equity and the environment are being marginalised by the dominance of corporate interests. “The basis of attaining climate justice,” argues one activist present in Den Haag, “should begin with a rejection of all attempts to privatise the atmosphere.”
The arguments for such a course of action are powerful: climate change has been caused by the over-consumption of fossil fuels by developed countries, yet people that are feeling the effects—losing their lives, livelihoods and witnessing cultural genocide—are the poor of undeveloped nations. Climate change as it stands is no longer simply a problem of the atmosphere and its gases but a question of social and ecological justice. Beyond carbon, climate change expresses a world order that is sustained by the exploitation and violation of millions of peoples and their resources. What we are witnessing now is a new form of colonialism—carbon colonialism.
“Ending climate change,” believes Isaac Ousouka, from the Environmental Rights Action group based in Nigeria, “will mean dismantling the order.” The last two years have seen a huge surge in public consciousness—the realisation that the global economy is undemocratic, environ-mentally damaging, creates debt and is responsible for millions of deaths, is a publicly acknowledged fact. Climate change is a visible and very real example of the parasites of the global economy ignoring common-sense solutions to a global problem. The reality of the ensuing climate chaos means that unless there is dramatic and radical restructuring of the world’s financial institutions, urgent measures to prevent future disasters will not be taken.
Activists from the Rising Tide Coalition have called for a season of carbon action—“for all concerned people, sympathetic communities, grassroots groups and individuals around the world to organise their own autonomous actions against the Emitters, Traders and Accountants who all stand to benefit from the privatisation of the Earth’s atmosphere. March 21 marks the Equinox—the day the tide is at its highest—and will see groups all over the world taking action. The aim is to create a global atmosphere so crisis and tension packed that it will force open the door to progress with climate protection.”
“The problem with Den Haag,” said an activist who took part in the Rising Tide actions, “is that we witnessed a process whereby NGOs such as Greenpeace have been sucked into the negotiating process, muffling radical voices. We saw symbolic action after symbolic action on a daily basis, with a complementary nod of the head from some fat politician. The people from the Rising Tide Coalition were the first people to walk out of those talks because they were the only ones that stood up and said ‘these talks are a farce, they are about a trade treaty not a climate treaty.’”
What we do have to do now is start to name and shame the lobby groups, corporations and accountants that sit on the sidelines of the climate talks pushing the corporate agenda, and start highlighting climate issues as a major effect of the global economic market. And build links between groups opposing economic globalisation and climate groups, to make this a truly world-wide issue. Plans are already underway for a mobilisation for Bonn, where the climate talks are set to continue in Mid-July. Watch this space  and get involved. Check out the web site <www.risingtide.nl/> or e-mail to <groupclimate_bonn@yahoo.de> or in the U.K. mail to PO Box 9656, London, N4 4JY.
- Kim Bryan
 

CREATIVELY CHANGING YOUR LIFE

10 ways to cut your carbon and save the world—from the fluffy to the spikey...

The average distance a piece of food travels to get to your dinner plate is 2000 km, in a flurry of trucks, boats, aeroplanes and more trucks. Modern farming and transportation methods mean that we use 20 times more energy producing a piece of food now than we did in 1910. It may be generating profit, but let’s face it, it’s not exactly progress. Local farmers and shops are being replaced by large out of town shopping areas reachable only by car. Changing your lifestyle and assessing the impact that you as an individual have on the global climate is a good place to start.

1. Start by calculating your annual emissions output. No matter how small you can make a difference. The climate calculator on the website <lomaprieta.sierraclub.org/global_warming/carbon.html> is a good place to start. It is an interactive software tool designed to raise people’s awareness of the greenhouse gases they produce through their daily lives and lifestyle.

2. Inform yourself and inform others. A  good starting point is to get clued-up on the issues: read the varying opinions and work out where you stand. We recommend the following sources of information:
— Carbon Wars, Jeremy Leggett. A good history of the COP process. Published by Penguin books, ISBN 0-14-028494-X
— Greenhouse Market Mania. A sound analysis of the corporate lobbying going on behind the Kyoto protocol. Published by the Corporate Europe Observatory on <www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/> or e-mail <ceo@xsall.nl>
— The Dyson Effect, all about Carbon and forestry offsets, available for £2 from Corner House, PO Box 3137, Station Road, Sturminster Newton, Dorset. Or download it from <www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/>
— Indy media site from the Den Haag protests <www.climate.indymedia.org/>
— Rising Tide Website <squat.net/climate/>
— Greenpeace website <www.greenpeace.org>

3. It is unlikely you are an avid car driver if you are reading this magazine. But, if you are, here is some advice taken from Anna Semlyen’s latest book, Cutting Your Car Use:
— Localise, by working, shopping and socialising nearby your home
— Shop and get information by post, phone or Internet
— Combine and share journeys, join Freewheelers or another such organisation in your country. <www.freewheelers.co.uk> provides a free service linking drivers to passengers
— Ask for flexi-time at work so that being late is not an issue
— Cycle
— Use public transport
— Sell your car
— Think before you drive
— If you really must drive sometimes, consider switching to cleaner fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas, compressed natural gas or electricity. The British government is presently subsidising alternative fuel vehicles with grants of up to 75 percent. Contact the Environmental Transport Association at <www.eta.co.uk> for more information.

4. Fantastic! You have given up driving. But what about flying? Air travel is responsible for emitting roughly 1,100 million tonnes of C02 per year. Do you really need to fly within Europe or state to state? Train travel emits less carbon.
The website <www.chooseclimate.org> is all about air travel; containing interactive demonstrations and ways to calculate your fuel costs.

5. On average domestic homes produce 10 percent of overall greenhouse gas emissions. Do you really need a hair dryer, washing machine, tumble drier, dishwasher, electric whisk, electric toothbrush, carving knife, TV in every room, umpteen stereos, trouser press and an electric tin opener? Give up your electrical appliances. Pick a day when you and your friends hand them in and lock them away.

Make Your Voice Heard
6. Join Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth (FoE) and let them campaign on your behalf. Most cities have branches of both FoE and Greenpeace. Send letters, faxes and e-mails to the relevant  politicians and companies out-lining your concerns and urging them to take action.

7. Public Outreach. One of the most essential aspects of any campaign. Set up a local climate group and outreach to local communities. Highlight the issues and look for ways to improve the environment and the impact of the “car” within your community.
At this stage you may be-come frustrated by the lack of results. You may have realised that if you want to reduce emissions and make a significant impact to prevent climate chaos, you have to fight more enemies than you first thought—the P.R. giants, multi-national car and oil companies, national governments, inter-national finance institutions and the entire global market economy. You may well begin to feel thoroughly pissed off. It’s understandable, we’ve been there ourselves.

Empower Yourselves
8. Guerrilla Gardening: greening our cities and reclaiming our urban environ-ments permanently by transforming them into places where communities can thrive.
Planting trees and plants helps to absorb toxins from the atmosphere, replenishes the land and makes you feel happier and healthier in the mornings.
Imagine the streets lined with plum trees; carrots bursting forth from recently re-claimed tarmac; mouthwatering grapes hanging from the lamp posts and those grey metal boxes banished from the roads. Its working locally to implement a global solution. (Check out CB #10 for more information on street reclaiming.)

9. Take on the global economy using Direct Action as a tool to stop those bastards in their tracks. Take part in the global day of action on March 21. Keep your ears to the ground and go to the COP6.5 actions (see the Climate Casinos feature for more information).

10. Take Direct Action: Choose a relevant company in your area and make their lives hell. Blockade them, shut them down, gain public sympathy, use the local media, target residents adversly affected by the company and drive them out of town.

11. Take a leaf out of the Monkey Wrench Gang. We will say no more.

A “Sprinkling” of Conceivable  Actions:
Teach-ins; bike-ins; strikes; distributing flyers; street theatre; demonstrations; occupations; showing climate change films; organising speakers and  discussions; tree plantings at petrol stations;  blockades and shutdowns; Critical Mass bike rides; handing out free food; music, dancing and poetry; establishing grass roots community councils; and constructively placed pies.

[Apologies for so many internet based contacts—if you are interested in finding out more and don’t have access to a computer, contact Car Busters and we will send you the info by mail.]
 

Petrochemical Explosion

Cutting your carbon emissions is the beginning but not the end of the story, when it comes to sustainable living. Cutting carbon can reduce your role in Global Warming, but the extraction of oil will continue, with all its consequent environmental destruction, human rights abuses and contamination of the soils, air and water, for as long as the “spin-off” industries continue. There are a thousand other areas of life in which you are affected by petroleum products. If you want to live truly free of the multi-nationals and their disgraceful, polluting, profit-driven behaviour, there is much more to avoid than simply the car, as this extract from Heathcote Williams’ Autogeddon makes abundantly clear:

…a look into the human garage:
The petrochemical fall-out
In kitchen, bathroom and living area.

Sausage skins? Polyvinyl dichloride.
Chewing gum? Hydrocarbon wax.
Margarine? Oleo-marge—
You might not be able to tell it from butter with your tongue
But you can with a dip-stick.

Looking for love?
Petrolatum jelly will accelerate it
With loveless haste.

Giving off fumes?
…Mouthwash?
Benzoic acid will take your breath away,
And your larynx as well.

Losing touch?
Benzodiazepine
Should settle your feet back on the pedals.

Losing control because those in power
Are out of touch?
C.S. gas and a hundred other incapacitating agents
Should see you’re steered back in the right direction.

Identity crisis?
Why not change sex in mid-lane with stilboestrol
Or testosterone phenylpropionate?

In the ditch?
Take up with meths
And sputter back on the road.

Hungry?
Butylated-hydroxy-toluene
And all the other food preservatives
Now work so well
They’ve diversified to accommodate human meat:
Our bodies have become so rich in prophylactics
That corpses are resisting natural decomposition—
You can keep it all together
Even though you’re dead.
Salves, ointments, paints, adhesives, luggage,
Detergents, food dyes, printing inks, laminates,
Rust preventers, tiles, floorings, piping, lubricants,
Fibres, solvents, scents, soap, rainwear, plastics,
Deodorants, emulsifiers, shoe cream, photographic film,
Magnetic tape, rectal suppositories, explosives…
All petrochemically produced
And all owned by arachnoid oligopolies
Gushing with product enthusiasm.

Like a drink? Ethyl alcohol—
Some spirits now on the market
Never saw a grain in their lives.
Another for the road?
More appropriate then ever
If the motorist’s high
Comes from a refinery not a distillery.

Oh, you don’t want a Scotch? Have a beer—
Stabilised with propylene glycol alginate.
Something soft?
—a fruit flavour
Enriched by propinol…
Now be a good boy, drink up your juice,
Then you can play with your cars.

Even the glint in someone’s eye
May be petrochemical;
And each new life is anointed
With a petrochemical by-product—
Baby oil.

Should anyone remain untouched
And refuse to have petrol pumped into every orifice,
Polyurethane foam for incendiary furniture,
Combustible acrylic for curtains and covers,
Should see that you end up in more manageable shape.

Asphalt completes the picture,
Transforming the petrochemical rainbow
Into a giant ouroborus,
Running rings around the world
And eating its own tail.

Heathcote Williams’ Autogeddon is available through Car Busters. Please see the Resources pages for more information.
 

Skill Sharing

EFFECTIVE INTERNET ACTION ALERTS

Phil Agre

An action alert is a message that someone sends out to the Net asking for a specific action to be taken on a current political issue. If they are well designed, they can be a powerful way to invite people to part-icipate in the processes of a democracy.
An Internet action alert should always be part of an issue campaign with a coherent strategy and clear goals.
The action alerts can be divided into two categories, single messages and structured campaigns:
1. Single alerts are broadcast in the hope that they will propagate to the maximum possible number of sympathetic Internet users.
2. Structured campaigns are typically conducted through mailing lists specially constructed for the purpose, and their intended audience may include either the whole Internet universe or a narrower group of already-mobilised partisans.
Both types of action alerts are obviously modeled on things that have been happening on paper, through telephone trees, and lately via fax machines, for a long time. What computer networks do is make them a lot cheaper. A networked alert can travel far from its origin by being forwarded from friend to friend and list to list, without any additional cost being imposed on the original sender. So, what you will need to do is:

Establish Authenticity: Bogus action alerts travel just as fast as real ones. Don’t give alerts a bad name.
Include clear information about the sponsoring organisation and provide the reader with several ways of tracing back to you—e-mail address, postal address, phone number. Including this contact information makes sense, anyway—if you want people to join your movement they must have a means of establishing contact with you.
One way to establish authenticity is by appending a digital signature. Few people will check the signature, though, and many people will remove the signature when they forward your message to others. So there’s no substitute for clearly explaining who you are and giving people a way to reach you.

Date It: Paper mail and faxes get thrown away quickly, but action alerts can travel through the Internet forever.
Do not count on the message header to convey the date (or anything else); people who forward Internet messages frequently strip off the  header. Give your recommended action a clearly stated time-out (or end) date. If you think there will be follow-up actions, or if you want to convey that this is part of an ongoing campaign, say so. That way, people will contact you or look out for your next alert.

Include Beginning and Ending Markers: You can’t prevent people from modifying your alert as they pass it along. Fortunately this only happens accidentally, as extra commentary accumulates at the top and bottom of the message as it gets forwarded. So put a bold row of dashes or something similar at the top and bottom so extra stuff will look extra. That way, it will be clear what you and your credibility are standing behind.

Beware of Second-Hand Alerts: Although it is uncommon for someone to modify the text of your alert, sometimes people will foolishly send out their own paraphrase of an alert, perhaps based on something they heard verbally. These second-hand alerts usually contain exaggerations and other factual inaccuracies, and as a result they can easily be used to discredit your alert.
If you become aware of inaccurate variants of your alert, you should immed-iately notify relevant mailing lists of the existence of these second-hand alerts. Explain clearly what the facts are and implore the community not to propagate the misleading variants.
This action has two virtues: first, it may help to suppress the incorrect reports; and second, it positions you as someone who cares about the truth.

Be Sensitive: If your alerts concern highly sensitive matters, for example the status of specifically named political prisoners, then you may want to know precisely who is getting your notices, how, and in what context. If so, include a prominent notice forbidding the forwarding of your alert.

Make It Self-Contained: Don’t presuppose that your readers will have any context beyond what they get on the news—define your terms, avoid references to previous messages on your mailing list, and provide lots of background, or the URL for a Web page that provides full details. Your most important audience consists of people who are sympathetic to your cause and want to learn more about it before they take action.

Cyber Activism: Decide whether to ask for e-mail messages (which can be huge in number but near-zero in effect), written letters (which will be fewer but more effective), or phone calls (which fall in between).
Consider other options as well: perhaps the sole purpose of your alert is to solicit contacts from a small number of committed activists, or to gather information, or to start a mailing list to organise more actions.

Make It Easy to Understand: It is crucial to begin with a good, clear headline that summarises the issue and the recom-mended action. Use plain  language, not jargon. Check your spelling. Use short sentences and simple grammar. Choose words that will be understood worldwide, not just in your own country or culture. Solicit comments on a draft before sending it out.

Get Your Facts Straight!: Your message will circle the earth, so double-check. Errors can be disastrous. Even a small mistake can make it easy for your opponents to dismiss your alerts as “rumours.”

Start a Movement, Not a Panic: Do not say ”forward this to everyone you know.” Do not overstate. Do not plead. Do not say “Please Act NOW!!!”. You are not trying to address “everyone”; you’re trying to address a targeted group of people who care about the issue.  And if the issue really is time-critical then just explain why, in sober language. Do not get obsessed with the immediate situation at hand. Maintaining a sense of that larger context will help you and your readers from becoming dispirited in the event that you lose the immediate battle.

Tell the Whole Story: Most people have never heard of your issue, and they need facts to evaluate it. Facts, facts, facts. If your opponents have circulated their own arguments, you’ll need to rebut them, and if they have framed the facts in a misleading way then you’ll need to explain why.
On the other hand, you need to write concisely. Even if you’re focused on the actions, good explanations count more. After all, one of the benefits of your action alert—maybe the principal one—is that it informs people about the issue. Even if they don’t act today, your readers will be more aware of the issue in the future.

Don’t Preach to the Converted: If you really care about your issue, take the time to find language that is suitable for a broad audience—avoid “insider” terminology.

Avoid Polemics: Your readers should not have to feel they are being hectored to go along with something from the pure righteousness of it.

Make It Easy to Read: Use a simple layout with lots of white space. Break up long paragraphs and use bullets and section headings to avoid visual monotony.
If your organisation plans to send out action alerts regularly, use a distinctive design so that everyone can recognise your “brand name” instantly.
Use only plain ASCII characters. Just to make sure, do not use a MIME-compliant mail program to send the message; use a minimal program such as Berkeley mail.  Format the message in 72 columns or even fewer; otherwise it is likely to get wrapped around or otherwise mutilated as people forward it onwards around the net.

Do Not Use a Chain-Letter: A chain-letter petition is an action alert that includes a list of names at the end, inviting people to add their own name and forward the resulting alert-plus-signature-list to everyone they know.
Unfortunately, it is an idea that doesn’t work—most of the signatures will never reach their destination, and worse, a small proportion of the signatures will be received many times, thus annoying staff and persuading your opponents they’re dealing with an incompetent movement that can never hold them accountable.

Get Action Feed Back: If you are calling on people to telephone a legislator’s office, for example, you should provide an e-mail address and invite them to send you a brief message. You can use them to count the number of callers your alert generates, which will be invaluable information when you speak with the legislator’s staff.

Do Not Overdo It: Action alerts might become as unwelcome as direct-mail advertising.  If you’re running a sustained campaign, set up your own list. Then send out a single message that calls for some action and include an advertisement for your new list. If you must send out multiple alerts on the same issue, make sure each one is easily distinguishable from the others and provides fresh, useful information.

Do a Post-Mortem: When the campaign is over, try to derive some lessons for others to use. What problems did you have? What mistakes did you make? What unexpected connections did you make? Who did you reach and why? Which mailing lists was your alert forwarded to, and which of these forwardings actually caused people to take action? Good guesses are useful too.

E-Mail is Not Enough: An action alert is not an organisation. If you want to build a lasting movement, at some point you’ll have to gather people together.

Encourage Good Practices
The Internet is a democratic medium that provides us with the time and space to do the right thing. So let’s use the Internet in a positive way and encourage others to do the same. Remember, forwarding a badly designed action alert actually harms the cause that it is supposed to support.
 

Studies and Reports

Global Warming Worse Than Expected
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have released their strongest report to date on the effects and dangers of global warming.
A draft summary for policy makers, issued on 22 January, said the report projects the Earth’s average surface temperature will rise 1.4 to 5.8 degrees centigrade (2.5 to 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) between 1990 and 2100, higher than its 1995 estimate of a 1 to 3.5 degree centigrade rise (1.8 to 6.3 degrees Farenheit).
Sea levels were likely to rise between 9 and 88 cm (3.54 and 34.64 inches) between 1990 and 2100.
It further predicts that the average global temperature could be as much as 6 degrees centigrade (11 degrees Fahrenheit) higher at the end of the century than it was in 1990. That is a bigger change than the world has seen since the end of the last Ice Age, and could lead to chaotic weather, with storms, flooding and severe droughts.
The report is the strongest word yet from the IPCC, which groups 2,500 of the world’s top climate scientists. “In 1995, we said since 1860 there had been a 0.3 to 0.6 degree centigrade rise,” one source familiar with the report, who asked not to be named, said. “Now it is 0.4 to 0.8 degrees centigrade [0.7 to 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit]. The observed change is somewhat larger...As the report itself says, the last decade was certainly the warmest in 1,000 years.”
The Shanghai conference, at which the report was released, was the start of a series of meetings under U.N. auspices to gather evidence for climate negotiators. Other gatherings will focus on the social and economic costs of global warming and how to reduce it. The series ends in April with the release of a huge report in Nairobi, Kenya.
Klaus Toepfer, the head of the United Nations Environment Programme which part sponsors the IPCC, said the report should ring “alarm bells in every national capital and in every local community ... We must move ahead boldly with clean energy technologies and we should start preparing ourselves for the rising sea levels, changing rain patterns and other impacts of global warming.”
However, a key conflict in climate negotiations is a U.S.-led effort to reduce the impact of cuts, recently exacerbated by the change of administration. The U.S. is now claiming it will not be ready to partake in the next stage of talks in Bonn, Germany, in May.
- BBC, Reuters and AP, January 22

Reducing Car Use for Short Trips
The Centre for Transport Studies at the University of Central London have completed a study entitled ”Potential For Mode Transfer of Short Trips.”
377 in-depth interviews were conducted about short trips by car and analysed to establish why the car was used, what alternatives were perceived and what would induce users to change to an alternative.
Alternatives to the car were identified for nearly 80 percent of short car trips, with business and work trips the least likely to transfer, and taking children to school the most likely. Of all the short trips by car, about 31 percent could transfer to walking, 31 percent could be bussed and 7 perc