The numbers are staggering. Transportation "depends on petroleum for 97 per cent of its fuel", "accounts for 28 per cent of US [greenhouse gas] emissions and consumes twice as much petroleum as the United States produces annually". Given that "surface transportation modes account for about 88 per cent of transportation carbon dioxide emissions and for a comparable share of energy consumption", it is no wonder that the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the US National Academies, the source of these numbers, is keen on research that could help to reduce the US's addiction to oil.
The report in question, "A Transportation Research Program for Mitigating and Adapting to Climate Change and Conserving Energy", was produced to identify and address perceived gaps in current knowledge.
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12801.html
The TRB does itself an injustice by implying that the report is just a "quick and dirty" look at the subject. The work may have been done so quickly that the proposals for research are "conceptual in nature" but the document makes important points. For example, it tells us that there is poor understanding of the need to consider policies and practices for adapting the transportation system "to changes in precipitation, flooding, storm surges, and wind loadings that are likely to occur in the future as climate changes".
Plenty of people and organisations are looking at the research needed to make vehicles more efficient. In its report, the TRB's Committee for Study on Transportation Research Programs to Address Energy and Climate Change concentrates on infrastructure and how we use transport. The committee set out "to identify research needs with regard to policies and strategies relating to the use of the transportation system and to assist infrastructure owners in adapting to climate change".
For evidence of the importance of resilient infrastructure in the UK, look no further than the disruption to transport following the recent snowy bouts.
Some people seized on the unusually heavy snow as evidence that climate change is bunk - a notion that grabbed too many headlines. Far from it, it was evidence that climate change could make transport more vulnerable to extremes. What will happen this summer if we have a heat wave and roads melt while trains start to conk out through overheating?
Inclement episodes could become more frequent, and more extreme, requiring us to make expensive changes to accommodate them. As the TRB put it, "The cost of adapting infrastructure is high, as is the uncertainty about the timing, magnitude, and location of the risks."
On how we use that infrastructure, the report says that "One of the most effective mitigation strategies would be to tax or charge for use of the system in ways that more fully reflect the economic, social, and environmental costs of its use". As the committee says: "Charging for mileage travelled on all roads could make this possible in the future and could supplement or replace taxes on fuels that currently generate revenues for highway and transit infrastructure."
Proposals like this recall the recent ruckus in the UK surrounding scientific evidence on drugs. Experts have an annoying habit of coming up with what you can only call inconvenient truths. Perhaps we also need research into how to persuade people to accept politically unpopular changes that are in the best interests of everyone on the planet.
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