European Car Boom Erases Progress on Emissions

Think America is in denial about global warming? Look at Europe — Dublin, for instance, where the New York Times reports [registration required] that the number of cars has doubled in 15 years:

No trains run to the new suburbs where hundreds of thousands of Dubliners now live, and the few buses going there overflow with people. So nearly everyone drives — to work, to shop, to take their children to school — in what seems like a constant smoggy traffic jam. Since 1990, emissions from transportation in Ireland have risen about 140 percent, the most in Europe.

Vehicular emissions across Europe have jumped 23 percent since 1990, the European Environment Agency reports, completely offsetting reductions from cleaner factories and more eco-friendly fuels and vehicles. "What we gain by hybrid cars and ethanol buses, we more than lose because of sheer numbers of vehicles," says Ronan Uhel, a senior scientist at the agency. Denmark, which has successfully curbed traffic (and promoted bicycle use) through high taxes on cars, is the exception, whereas Dublin is far more typical of cities in Europe and worldwide:

As traffic increases, governments build more roads, encouraging people to buy more cars and move yet farther away. In Europe alone, 6,200 miles of motorways were built from 1990 to 2003 and, with the European Union's enlargement, 7,500 more are planned. Government enthusiasm for spending on public transportation, which is costly and takes years to build, generally lags far behind.

Examples abound in Asia and Latin America as well. "Since 1997, Beijing has built a new ring road every two years, each new concentric superhighway giving rise to a host of malls and housing compounds," the Times notes. Meanwhile, "Dublin and Beijing are building trams and subways, but they will not reach out to the new commuter communities where so many people now live."

In fact, the attention given to the Bush administration's calculated foot-dragging on global warming has obscured a global social dynamic that may be much more difficult to reverse. "Believe me — if there was an alternative we would use it," says one Dubliner. "We care about the environment. It's just hard to follow through here." This vicious circle must be broken — but how?