Transport, climate change and the city - Transport Climate Change and the City - page 34

Figure 1.23 Film set from Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon , 1902, a French black and white silent film.
In our collective trip to the world of motorisation, what will be our Méliès rescue ship? 13
Source : British Film Institute Stills Collection.
access, ownership, urban structure, and relation to walking, cycling, and mass public transport
systems. The very evident problem is in thinking of ways in which a radically different set
of relationships between the different modes of transport can be designed, with a transition
occurring more quickly than the slow rate of current progress. The consumption-led business
model seems to be the only pathway within the current economic and political system. But
this is inherently unsustainable, and it is likely to become very inequitable, as the price of
travel increases under constrained energy supplies and as the impacts of climate change become
clear. Levels of consumption in the wealthy countries must be substantially reduced if more
sustainable futures are to be achieved, where social and environmental priorities are given
greater weight relative to the growth in wealth. 14 Such a change must involve a wider range
of interested parties if progress is to be made; hence inclusivity is an important principle.
Otherwise, the default option is that the vested and powerful interests continue to dominate,
perhaps increasingly so, as seen in the North American model, and manifest partly through
the auto-industrial complex. 15 This future is very likely, as the powerful interests continue to
dominate the political and public interest groups that contest it (Freund and Martin, 1993),
whilst in the main the public remain unaware and disinterested in the forces that shape their
lives and lifestyles.