Better Transport

4 February: We keep telling the Government that building new roads will make it harder to reduce CO2. Well guess what: yesterday they admitted that we are going to miss our 2010 targets for greenhouse gas reductions.

The plan had been to cut CO2 by 20% from 1990 levels, getting a headstart on the much bigger cuts we'll need to make to avoid climate change. By the end of 2008 we'd only managed 10% cuts.

One of the main problems is that while emissions from some sectors - such as business and energy - have been declining, CO2 from road transport has risen 7% since 1990 (pdf). Even though cars and vans getting greener, CO2 is rising because we're all driving further.

This is the problem with the Government's transport strategy: they keep hoping that cars will become green enough to make up for the extra distance we're having to travel. Unfortunately this isn't going to happen any time soon (and even if it did, what about all the traffic, noise and road casualties?).

It's time to stop spending so much money on road building and start investing in more sustainable alternatives, like the affordable measures we outlined in our manifesto: Improving Everyday Transport.