Letter from America
Page 61
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by janus
EVERYTHING—or at any rate this is how it sometimes seems to me— everything conspires to accentuate e difference in size between what is hap:ning here and what is happening in Britain. Jen the terminology tends to support the stinction.
For example, on both sides of the Atlantic recent years there has been increasing mcern about what man is doing to his own ty of life by polluting the rivers, the ocean, e land, the flora and fauna, the very air :. breathe. In Europe, the battle which has rw begun to save mankind from itself was first subsumed under the heading of .onservation". There was even proclaimed European Conservation Year.
r0 many people in America this sounded as though the Europeans wanted to suspend their civilization in aspic .d keep it from change of any kind. That mething of the sort is contemplated can further deduced from the emphasis on eping the motor vehicle, and especially :. lorry, well away from ancient monuments d other symbols of the past.
At least the British Government found somewhat happier choice of title when it rmed the Department of the Environment. ) my ears, which have perhaps become uned to a more hectic turn of phrase, the )rd still has a somewhat too cosy sound. it no doubt it suits the British temperament. an confident that already the lorry-owning sociations and other bodies are setting their own committees or working rties on the environment. I wish them every ccess.
In the States the road goods transport iustry is represented by American ucking Associations. The ATA has .eady committed itself to full support of mind laws, regulation and enforceinent" signed to reduce pollution, noise and tstes detrimental to the environment. le committee on whose recommendation s decision is based is called the Committee
Ecology. With such nomenclature the nerican citizen is in a congenial world which all options seem to be open.
VITH much in this world the British operator or trucker would be familiar. He would expect the -minion of a committee on ecology to be elf inspired from outside, in other words nn changes in the environment. And he mild be right.
Pressure to curb the nuisance caused by ries is increasing at both federal and .te level. As often happens, there is ;orous competition between the two to : which can be harsher. For example, the :w York City Commissioner of Air sources—and there's a title for youls attacked federal regulations laying down w and more stringent requirements. He 3 complained that they will apply only vehicles built after 1975, whereas federal islation also requires _skies to improve standards even before that date.
In the State of Oregon, vehicle operators
have launched their own campaign against pollution. They are distributing posters and other literature to their drivers and other staff urging them to "Be a Good Highway Neighbour-. It is clear that operators generally are aware of the growing concern about the undesirable by-products of civilization and of industrial and social progress. The need is felt to reassure the public that road transport too is on the side of the angels. In the words of the president of the Oregon Trucking Association, it is hoped that the campaign and other activities of the industry "will make Oregon a better place to live. Remember, we live here too."
ANOTHER positive point in the industry's favour is also being put
' to the public. I have in front of me an announcement by the Regular Common Carrier Conference, of Washington, DC, which is headed "How did a truck make the Easter Parade?" It is addressed to a Mrs Haggerty, and explains the part played by the "highway common carrier" in bringing her family's Easter outfit to a Chicago department store from Boston, New York City and California.
According to the announcement, the various items were carried for a total of 5900 miles and the carriers' charges came to only about one per cent of the price paid by Mrs Haggerty in the shop. In Britain, the distances would not be so great, but there is the same lesson to be learned. Pollution and other damage which may be caused by lorries are a natural consequence of a 'standard of living deliberately chosen by the public. As great an effort is required from the public as from operators to see that the side effects are cured or minimized without destroying the main benefits.
The ordinary American does not necessarily see the British problem in the same light as his own. He may even envisage it in terms of conservation rather than
ecology. He travels to visit the relics of that England, Scotland or Wales which existed before his ancestors left it or even before the sailing of the Mayflower. Unless he is a regular and frequent visitor, he may even sustain himself with the illusion that the British way of life is still very much what it was 300 years ago.
APART from the traditional London fog, therefore, he finds it hard to understand that there should be any problem in Britain associated with pollution through eye, nose or ear. He is no doubt encouraged in his opinion by the travel brochures which naturally emphasize the delights of visiting the Shakespearean shrines in Stratford-on-Avon rather than of watching the traffic rattling down the High Street.
One of my friends in the Middle West showed me a book the other day with reproductions of the work of the English artist, L. S. Lowry. Most of the pictures were street scenes in the North country, and they must have been painted several decades ago, so that they were nicely calculated to arouse nostalgia in an expatriate Lancastrian such as myself.
THIS, I had supposed, was my friend's intention. Nothing of the sort. The point he had in mind was the contrast between the streets in Lowry-land and what is in his opinion the desolation of Los Angeles. He drew my attention to something that had previously escaped me. Although there was plenty of road space in all the pictures, and although they were alive with pedestrians, there was not a single vehicle of any kind to be seen, either in the foreground or in the remote distance.
I was reminded of the story by H. G. Wells about the people from Mars who, although masters of advanced technology, had somehow failed to hit upon the principle of the wheel. Lowry, I discovered under my friend's prompting, is indeed the enemy of the vehicle and the apostle of the pedestrian precinct.
HOW differently and how much better you organize these things in Britain, was the burden of my friend's commentary. Nowhere in any town in the US would Lowry be able to find his favourite subject. The tide of traffic years ago swept all his little men off the roadway on to the sidewalk, and even there they have an uneasy existence with all the fumes and din.
Far be it from me to shatter my friend's illusions. If he really believes that it would be possible for him to stand and chatter with his cronies in the middle of Piccadilly—I refer, of course, to Piccadilly in Manchester rather than to the thoroughfare of the same name farther South—actual experience would put him right soon enough; or, who knows?, he might even succeed in diverting the traffic and starting a trend.
Goo'night.