topic
Page 44
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Cargo cult
by Janus
NOW that for the tune being some of the heat has been taken out of the controversy about the heavy lorry, it is possible to look a little more steadily at the kind of people who have been fermenting the quarrel. They seem just the people with the means to make most use of the goods carried by the vehicles which they are attacking.
There is a tempting comparison here with the so-called cargo cults in New Guinea. According to the anthropologists, the natives of that country lived for centuries in peace and seclusion until the arrival of the white man with the blessings as well as the drawbacks of civilization. Ships and aircraft brought strange goods, as if by magic. The obstinate belief has grown up that the cargo is made in heaven and that evil spirits alone are responsible from preventing it from reaching New Guinea in an uninterrupted flow.
REVERSING this belief, some of the fiercest protectors of the environment cannot appreciate the chain of events which lead to the appearance of the goods they buy in the shops. They act on the supposition that the vans and lorries, and especially the lorries, are created by the powers of darkness merely in order to confuse. A thin veneer of credibility is spread over the atgument by the suggestion that the railways could do the job equally well.
The dispute over the environment, of course, covers many subjects apart from transport. In the face of criticism there is a tendency to react too strongly and to promote improvements which will retain all the advantages of this, that or the other development but will completely eliminate the undesirable consequences. The transport industry is being tempted to subscribe to this impossible ideal.
/N America (where else?) the experimenters are boasting improvements to the car engine which will make it possible for air to leave the exhaust in a cleaner state than when it was taken in. No doubt there are equally sanguine hopes of building an engine so silent that it hurts, and at any time now we shall have news of the creation of a mechanical man who inhales carbon monoxide and breaths out pure ozone.
There is little hope of general progress along these lines. Everything possible must be done to reduce what is so engagingly called pollution--the word begs the question in much the same way as "juggernaut",.--but the difficulty and the expense may make it impossible to go beyond certain limits.
One or two warnings along these lines have already been given. Mr J. H. Kirby, the new president of the UK Chamber of Shipping, has pointed out that a country which imports huge quantities of oil—and at an ever-increasing price—simply cannot afford some of the measures proposed to ensure that tankers do not leave "relatively infinitesimal" traces of oil in the sea. Another transport leader, Mr Adam Thompson, chairman of Caledonian /BUA, has accused local councils and politicians of trying to catch votes as protectors of the environment. If people really wish to return to a pastoral existence, he has said, or to build cuckoo clocks rather than to extend technology and communications, "then let us at least say so, and some of us wasting our time in the industry can learn the art of ploughing, or some other activity".
EQUALLY strong statements would be justified from the road transport industry. There is some support, mixed with more dubious material, in the first report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. It finds no firm evidence that the present level of the pollutants of road vehicles in Britain is a hazard to health. On the other hand, the report continues, more needs to be known of the effects of long-term exposure to the various components of exhaust fumes at the relatively low concentration at which they occur.
The reasonable inference is that the volume of traffic will increase. The forecast by the Commission is an increase of 140 per cent in 40 years—from 16 million vehicles in 1970 to nearly 40m in the year 2010.
0 N noise the Commission is less amiable. The main threat comes from transport, says the report, which gives the estimate that between 20 and 45 per cent of people in towns live in roads where the level of noise from traffic is above what would genrerally be thought desirable for residential areas. If traffic increased according to the predictions and the noise level was not reduced, the number of homes in towns affected to an undesirable degree would go up to between one-third and two-thirds. AT least the report admits that the number of vehicles will not necessarily continue to grow at the same rate as in recent years. The caution is justified. One significant conclusion from the published figures is that in the last year or two, if the growth in the number of cars is left out of the count there has actually been a decline in the total number of vehicles. It shows itself most clearly in the figures for motorcycles; but the number of goods vehicles also fell by 53,400 in 1968 and by 1180 in 1969.
The Civic Trust Report on "Heavy Lorries" which caused some stir when it was published a few months ago prefers to break down the goods vehicle total in accordance with the unladen weight. By extending the figures into the future, it suggests that in 1980 there will be 500,000 vehicles weighing over 5 tons and that half of them will weigh more than 8 tons. This would mean a threefold increase in the number in 10 years and possibly a fourfold increase in payload.
ROM these figures the natural assumption is that national production would have gone up equally spectacularly. Operators would hardly put more and more and bigger and bigger lorries on the road unless there was traffic for them to carry. Hypnotized by its own statistics, the Civic Trust, like so many other people, seems to have fallen a victim to the cargo cult.
As production goes up, the demand for lorries will correspondingly increase. The demand can most economically becontained by giving the operator freedom, .within reason, to provide vehicles of a size and capacity that he thinks best. The limits that may have to be placed on the use of the larger vehicles should be reduced to a minimum, preferably by the provision of an adequate road system.
HE Royal Commission appears to hint that no system in the UK could be adequate for the kind of vehicle growth that has been forecast. To most people a national total of 40m vehicles would be sufficient pollution in itself, even if they were all electric and completely noiseless. It is easy to believe at times that the limit on tolerance has already been reached.
It is no more difficult to believe that the habits of people will change. The wish for a car will remain as strong as ever, but the average car may be used much less than it is at present. People will find other ways of getting about or of spending their time. On the other hand, there will be goods for transport, to an ever-increasing extent.
This is a development at least as plausible as that envisaged by the Royal Commission and by the Civic Trust. The need will remain for safeguarding the environment and reducing pollution, but it may come to be considered in a different context.