Trains are great!
August 30th, 2007 at 14:26

Apparently a single report has “proved” that cars are more environmentally friendly than trains. As you might spot on the link, the issue has been needlessly politicised by a bunch of anti-environmentalist cretins who have their heads in the sand, who seem to have no problem with ignoring an almost unanimous consensus that climate change is occurring.

I’m going to be generous and take the bullet pointed headlines of this at face value, and “accept” that cars have been proven to be more environmentally friendly than trains – even though the report only takes into account one hyperthetical journey, and seems to make assumptions about the occupancy of all of the vehicles involved, and the fuel consumptions of thousands of different types of cars.

Despite all of this, I would still argue that if we are serious about tackling global warming, then the last thing we should do is shut down the railways and give everyone cars. Why? Because its easier to make a couple of thousand trains more energy efficient than it is force everyone to buy a hybrid car.

Sure, using fossil fuels to power trains probably isn’t a good idea, but trains can be (more) easily upgraded to run off of electricity… electricity that can be generated entirely cleanly. A lot of railways are electrified – the London Underground, Eurostar (thus presumably the rest of the South East), and so on. Sure, this isn’t going to help if the source of the electricity is burning oil in a power station somewhere, but equally it could be generated by some wind turbines if they’d build some.

Car usage, being a “capitalist” mode of transport, as it is hilariously called on Guido’s blog, suffers from the so-called tragedy of the commons. In other words, why should I cut down on the amount of energy I consume?

Trains don’t have this problem, as its not possible to pick and choose your train. There’s no sports-utility-trains that go to the same places, that consume more fuel and make you feel important.

So I reckon it would be easier to upgrade the train network to more environmentally friendly trains, assuming such things exist or can be invented, than convince the general public to give a damn about the environment.

(Hypocrisy alert! I also drive a band C car… I’ll get a Prius whenever I finally start earning a lot of money. But I still like trains.)

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