Climate change and transport

This article is being written in the wake of a budget that has turned out to be far less green than one would have expected or been led to believe.

The best proof of my assertion lies in the fact that the government has just come out with a new car tax system that is not only unfair and ineffective but which is also socially unjust and definitely not eco-friendly.

It was a budget that as far as the transport sector is concerned, showed that it is solely interested in introducing taxes by stealth or else in ensuring that it would retain the same revenue levels of the past. Taxes which seem to have been drawn up by people who are at once insensitive to and incompetent in addressing the basic facts relating to vehicle emissions.

In encouraging people to go for vehicles up to 2499cc the budget showed that it does not believe in effective weighting against medium sized or large cars. In saying so, I am for the moment refraining from factoring in the fact that while environmental groups abroad advocate that their governments should incentivise the ownership of hybrid cars, in Malta in true Orwellian fashion, we have chosen to make them even more expensive and prohibitive than they might have ever been. Electric cars do not even feature in the equation.

All this makes a sham of the White Papers that were recently published promising us environmental sustainability in the transport sector. Even more so when realising that the budget focused exclusively on private cars without addressing the major pollutants - trucks, lorries, cranes, construction sector vehicles and public transport.

Transport in Malta and elsewhere contributes to three negative factors:

• congestion

• noise and air pollution

• and climate change

Although we have been promised educational campaigns on energy efficiency and energy saving, so far there have been no evident plans on how to educate transport end users.

People must be taught that driving less can help. But also that the same can be done by driving more fuel-efficient cars. The budget flies in the face of new technology which could help us meet these targets. People need to be taught that making cars more fuel efficient not only cuts carbon dioxide emissions but it also saves you money.

Cars are part of our future. We thus need to use them less and better. By law, all new cars should be more efficient and less polluting. We need real incentives to buy greener cars.

As things stand in Malta, vehicles are not only pumping out more greenhouse gases than ever before, due to lack of meaningful policies in place to cut these emissions, but while the percentage of the carbon footprint due to transport is somewhat stabilising itself abroad, in Malta it is on the increase.

Transport in Malta is the second highest but fastest growing contributor to national GHG emissions, with emissions from this sector increasing steadily between 1990 and the present year in step with rising vehicle numbers. Apart from this negative development, transport is also the major emitter of carbon monoxide. This fits with the statistic that private car ownership in Malta is among the highest in Europe with an average of every two persons owning a car. A figure which I consider to be somewhat conservative.

In fact, since 1990, transport sector CO2 emissions have increased more, percentage wise, than in the energy sector - 53 per cent as compared to 41 per cent. All this in spite of Malta having a lower rate of greenhouse gas emissions per capita, but a higher rate of emissions per GDP unit, compared to other EU member states, which is most likely related to the inefficiencies in energy generation, distribution and consumption.

Our biggest challenge will be to see whether we shall manage to decouple the growth in our transport volumes from economic growth no matter how fast or sluggish it might prove to be in the coming years. Equally so we need more patrons for public transport as well as needing to address congestion which is leading to traffic and associated health problems, related to particulate matter mainly as an air pollutant. The State of the Environment report chapters on land, air and climate bear me out.

As has happened in other cases, when Malta came to submit its latest air pollution report for publication by the EEA it was predictably late in submitting its report on this directive.

No matter how hard Malta has tried to play down the fact that eventually emissions from aviation need to be addressed, I cannot see this being avoided in a post Kyoto - 2013 scenario.

Other major countries tried to ride piggyback on Malta and Cyprus to avoid doing so too, but now EU member states like Britain have finally decided to include emissions from aviation and shipping in their climate Bill.

The public in Malta is so far completely in the dark about the implications of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. The same applies to the merits and demerits of the so-called Carbon Market.

We need to start planning as of now an aviation carbon trading plan that will not sell the climate short. We might delay and procrastinate but eventually we will have to include the carbon footprint of the aviation sector in Malta too.

The recent sour experience we all went through when a very senior Cabinet Minister decided to run roughshod over the concerns of environmental groups in connection with the new Għadira Road, jarred even more so when realising that this happens to be the same Minister who is trying to convince us that he is pushing for a more environmentally sustainable transport policy - particularly in the public transport sector.

He has threatened to hold everyone responsible if his project is not fast tracked, at a time when he intends to apply for EU funds for this project by next month, without backing his claims by any studies.

Even worse he has deliberately misled eminent NGOs like BirdLife and Din l-Art Ħelwa by trying to con them into believing that his road project would not cut through Phases 2 and 3 of the Foresta site. A claim which was instantly dismissed by the NGOs concerned who have always been highly professional in their studies and environmental reports.

One cannot expect better from politicians who are so insensitive that they have dismally failed to really understand what the Foresta 2000 project is all about and that there is far more to it than mere tree planting.

One cannot have sound transport and road infrastructure planning unless adequate studies are at hand concerning the potential environmental risks or benefits of these proposals.

If Malta wants to carry out a quantum leap in the transport sector it must have a Commission for Integrated Transport that includes all the major key players, particularly since any future developments are bound to have a positive or negative impact on the environment and the climate change sectors.

Government needs to draw on truly independent and professional advice. The "I know it all" attitude of arrogance must be abandoned once and for all.

If we really want to cut transport emissions we need to take far more than a one dimensional approach. We must gauge the demand for movement, the choice of transport mode, the technical efficiency of vehicles, the carbon content of the fuels used to power them and the efficiency of vehicle use.

Our point of departure should be to keep constantly in mind that transport (including international transport) is now the largest end use category of emissions in many countries.

In formulating forward looking strategies we also need to target both behaviour and technology to be more cost-effective.

Government itself needs to lead by example. Not only as far as the official cars of cabinet ministers and senior officials of parastatal companies are concerned, but also regarding the emissions of sub standard vehicles that are often used by various government entities, as can be evidenced by the strong pollutant role they play on our major roads.

Before embarking on a public education campaign, government itself and its officials must be first convinced that emissions trading can play a major part in a longer strategy to address transport emissions.

This might sound like a tall order, but unless we adopt such a holistic approach we will end up in the usual rut, of producing half baked measures that rather than offering solutions would be more inclined to create more problems for our citizens at large.

brincat.leo@gmail.com