Energy and equity: a beginner's guide to designing a zero carbon transport system

An inaugural lecture to be given at York University byProfessor John Whitelegg on 18th May 2009. Anyone can attend and it will also be streamed on the Internet. Those people familiar with Whitelegg's work will know he has been involved for many years in campaigning for better designed transport systems in terms of urban renewal and energy.

Title: Energy and equity: a beginner's guide to designing a zero carbon transport system

Abstract: Currently there are about 750 million vehicles on the planet. A prominent German forecasting organisation has predicted this will rise to 2.3 billion by 2030. Ivan Illich wrote "Energy and Equity" in 1974 and demonstrated the absurdity of our dependence on oil for routine daily trips and the illogicality of human behaviour devoting 1600 hours each year to service the demands of the car in order to travel 7500 miles at an average speed of 5mph. 25 years later the absurdities noted by Illich are now global and intensifying with very large year on year increases in car ownership and use in India and China. Each day our global mobility requires 5.8 million tonnes of oil and kills 3000 mainly poor and non-motorised citizens. This is expensive and requires very large public subsidy and is intimately linked with poor health outcomes ranging from obesity to hospital admissions as a result of poor air quality. This inaugural lecture explores the intimate geography of oil dependent transport, its global trends, its links with climate change and peak oil and explains its grip on society and decision makers and charts a new transport revolution that at a low cost will deliver socially just accessibility to our destinations at a zero carbon cost.

Venue - University of York, P/L001 Physics 1730 on 18th May 2009

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