Jeremy Leggett, Guardian
Cars are killing the planet. The carbon arithmetic allows no other conclusion. But there is an alternative.
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The Economist debate at the Hay festival this year asked the question "are cars killing the planet". Yes, I argued, they are, to the extent that people as they are currently designing and using cars are playing a major role in killing the planet.

...Instead of burning the 400 billion tonnes of carbon in oil (and however much of the gas and coal we decide to adapt for liquid fuels), we could if we wanted opt for a "feasible utopia" of alternatives. Let me give two examples of what I mean.

The first involves America, guzzler of 20 of the world's daily 84 million barrels of oil consumed. 12 of these 20 are imported, five of them from the Gulf. In a recent study, part funded by the Pentagon no less, a group of American energy-efficiency gurus concluded that all the oil the United States now uses could be displaced for less capital outlay than it would take to buy that oil. To replace oil use with cheaper alternatives in this way, the US would have to invest $180 billion over the next decade, for which the return would be $130 billion in annual savings by 2025. There are four steps to this particular feasible utopia.

First the US would have to use oil twice as efficiently as is the case today...

Second the US would need to substitute biofuels for gasoline....

Third the US would have to save some natural gas. This it could do easily. Low-hanging fruit, in terms of gas-efficiency measures, could easily save half projected national gas demand by 2025. The saved gas could be used instead of oil, or to make hydrogen.

The fourth step would be to introduce hydrogen...

My second example of feasible utopia is Sweden. The Swedish government announced in February that it plans to be world's first oil-free economy, and to achieve that status within 15 years from now...

We have to design and plan our way to survival and that is not in the direction of more suburbs. If we opt for high-concentration urban design, we can take great steps in both emissions reductions and social enhancement: from the renaissance of community through the chopping of the asthma rate, to many other social goods.

...if we redesign cities to eschew the car, maximise public transportation, and stop the spread of suburbs, we can cut the need for growth in absolute vehicle numbers. I do not own a car. Living as I do In London, this absence of vehicle actually improves my quality of life. Living where my parents do, in rural Sussex, carlessness is not an option. That is where vehicle redesign comes in.

Thanks to the peak oil problem, we will have to come to grips with all this whether we like it or not. As Hugo Chavez pointed out when visiting London recently, accelerating oil depletion and rising oil prices are going to leave many in the British middle classes in a state of enforced carlessness, and soon.

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Designing ourselves to death