Imagine that we had got rid of all the cars on the road. The parked cars too. It doesn't hurt to dream about it. What would our towns and villages look like?

Impossible? We are a nation of schemers. We have been genetically selected over two millennia to devise the most ingenious anti-systems to survive the bureaucracies of the world's most powerful empires. If we put 400,000 of these minds together, we can defeat anything. Defeating the car industry should be child's play. All we need to do is to recognise where our interests lie.

Try to imagine Valletta without cars. Then try Msida and Marsa. There will still be bustle and colour because people will still need to get from place to place. The buildings are not black with soot. Houses rendered uninhabitable by noise, vibration and pollution now revert to being the grand main street residences they were meant to be.

With 260,000 motor vehicles in a country of just 315 square kilometres and a population of 380,000, we are ridiculous. We should be laughing at ourselves when we're not crying. Instead we take ourselves seriously. The car empire is winning because we are divided into single units, every driver for him/herself.

The car importers reckon they will have a steady business importing 7,000 cars per year for the forseeable future. At a rough average of Lm5,000 each it comes to Lm35 million a year spent on insanity. A huge bite of that goes to the government in taxes. Our balance of payments gets knocked askew every year by it.

The importers take their cut over about half the selling price. They war about the importation of cars. Some of them have the power to have the budget altered to suit them. The country is up in arms because it has to pay more not because it is being gassed faster.

What do you get multiplying Lm5,000 by 260,000 motor vehicles? I get a lump in my throat the size of our national debt. The mind boggles at the implications. Dream on.

We are all brainwashed by advertising to aspire to own the next wonder of ante-diluvian technology. All of us. If it has a radiator, it carries a cooling system designed to make sure that something like a third of your fuel bill goes to raising the earth's temperature without getting you from A to B any faster. What is your yearly fuel bill? Still, we are suckers for the things.

I confess that I too love driving. I'll drive anything once and I hate the things. Motoring supplements are the economic mainstay of minor newspapers and the cherry on top for the major ones. Everybody gets a piece of the poisoned pie. Our best journalistic brains are proud to be able to review the latest 4WD aberration. We are all under the influence.

Politically it's a laugh. Sidesplitting. The next time you feel down, go stand outside a VRT station. The headlamps get adjusted and the brakes are tested. The rest gets noted. The owner is accurately informed by computer of the black clouds billowing out of his darling's backside but nothing happens.

Smooth tyres combined with excellent brakes are a recipe for disaster. No matter, the menace rolls off the ramps with all its papers in order. You could go from suicidal to euphoric and back in half a morning. Psychiatrists take note.

We should all have our heads examined. We live on an island 10 miles wide and 17 miles long. Gozo? Why do we have a Californian car culture? Perhaps it's because we think of ourselves as a country just like every other country. Everybody has cars. Why shouldn't we? We have ended up with more than anyone.

We should be radically different. We should be an exception. We should make every other country jealous. We could have a car-free country. Yes, we could. Instead we have a motor vehicle pool worth around Lm1.5 billion that is a greater cause of air pollution than the power stations. The tourists notice the smell the minute they land. From island in the sun we have gone to island in the stink.

We should have a plan. Instead we have politicians that run ahead of the herd. If it stampedes, they just run faster. We all want a car. They let us have it. They actually boast about the number of cars per head rising!

The public transport reform aims to have fewer buses. The non-plan should be called "into the future backwards". Instead of cutting edge alternative fuel vehicles, we have invested in Chinese diesels which promise or threaten to last us for 40 years. Other mass transport systems? Forget it.

Let's be honest, reversing our car culture would be a massive political undertaking. I am not surprised that neither of the other parties allows the thought to flit through their minds. I am a Green, I am constrained to hope for a better world because the alternative is too grim to ponder. For me it is enough that a third of our children suffer from asthma or allergies.

I have taken note of the announcement made at the recent launch of the asthma foundation that the rate of wheezing in children has tripled in the last 15 years. The rate of late onset asthma is curving upwards. Asthma loves everybody. When will somebody in authority notice?

Yes, there are other concomitant causes but air pollution stands out like the brown cloud on our horizon on bright cold days. We can see the air we breathe. What more do we need to get off our backsides?

Nothing will change until Greens have the political leverage to get the other parties to do something uncomfortable. We are all trapped in our cars in a nationwide political gridlock honking, hooting and getting nowhere fast. How much worse does it have to get before we are allowed to make it get better?

If we promised one another that there would be no more cars on our roads in 10 years' time, we would have a common project with positive social, cultural, economic, health and environmental implications to leave the rest of the world gobsmacked. We do not have a domestic car industry to sustain. We can opt out of the world's car culture. We can. Do we dare to dream?

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt