Letter: Cut down on cars

Sir: James Cadle (Letters, 22 November) is wrong to suggest that cars are not a principal element of the environmental crisis, at least as far as Britain is concerned. He makes the common mistake of assuming that the crisis is one of pollution. Certainly, pollution and health issues have been used to dramatise the problem, but they are secondary issues.

A primary issue is the unsustainable consumption of fossil fuels and the resulting global warming. Only cars that run on renewable energy would contribute to the avoidance of that problem.

Second, cars are such inefficient users of space that, to accommodate them and the spread-out development pattern which they lead to, we have wrecked a great deal of the countryside and allowed the destruction of our towns and cities through congestion. Bus services have been rendered inefficient and walking has been made unpleasant and dangerous.

No modifications to car technology can address these problems, and so our objective should be to reduce car usage.

ALAN TAYLOR

London SE24