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Carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles will continue to rise in the
European Community until the end of the century, even though the Community’s
target is to maintain emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000.

The forecast is included in the Community’s White Paper on transport
policy which was published last month, in the dying days of the British
presidency.

When the Council of Ministers met in Brussels at the end of May, just
before the Earth Summit, it agreed to hold down C02 emissions at 1990 levels.
In its report to the Commission, the British government said this target
could be achieved by doing ‘business as usual’. The report stressed that
transport should play its part in meeting the C02 target through improvements
in fuel efficiency.

However, in its ‘business as usual’ scenario, the White Paper says:
‘On current trends carbon dioxide emissions from the transport sector will
rise by some 24 per cent between 1990 and 2000.’ It adds that by 2010 road
transport will be producing 30 per cent of the Community’s C02 emissions.

The White Paper says technical measures designed to improve fuel efficiency
will not, on their own, stabilise C02 emissions. ‘Calculations .. show that
even with a 40 per cent increase in fuel efficiency of passenger cars by
the year 2005, stabilisation of C02 would not be achieved by 2010.’ It adds
that ‘energy-efficiency improvements will not be sufficient to compensate
for the projected growth’.

The White Paper, which was approved in October, says that the number
of cars could be controlled by introducing ‘a progressive environmental
charge on the annual mileage of private cars’. It then introduces the concept
of subsidiarity. ‘These measures are not primarily the Community’s responsibility.’

Roger Higman, transport campaigner for Friends of the Earth, says: ‘I
think they are ducking the issue.’

Environmentalists say that the proposals in the Green Paper published
last spring have been significantly watered down in the White Paper. The
Green Paper argued for a sustainable transport policy, which would include
encouraging public transport instead of private cars (This Week, 18 April
1992).

In the White Paper this clear commitment is replaced by much vaguer
phrasing: ‘Promotion of collective transport is a vital component of efforts
to integrate environmental objectives into transport policy’. Stephen Joseph
of the public transport pressure group Transport 2000 said: ‘There is a
lack of targets and any firm commitments.’ The White Paper is unequivocal
in its support for road building: ‘The problems of more peripheral regions
show that geographic disadvantages may be exacerbated by insufficient transport
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