DRIVE LESS - BREATHE BETTER

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York will convene a meeting of the world’s 40 biggest cities.

Cities produce 70% of the climate-changing gases. Bloomberg will be joined by Bill Clinton. Together, they will do what their own country has so far failed to do, and what Canada has also, in lockstep with our neighbours, also failed to do – reduce pollution and create measures that will help improve the environment – the air we breathe and the water we drink.


There are many elements to the program – from white roofs which provide better insulation to LED lights which reduce energy consumption.

What looms, if they can get the project off the ground is probably what our mayor would call “a war on cars.” Since Toronto is not among the world’s 40 largest cities (we are fifth in North America) I presume Rob Ford will not be invited to offer his Neanderthal approach to urban transportation.

Six years ago the first meeting was put together to discuss ways that cities could reduce pollution. That meeting was put together by Bill Clinton and Ken Livingstone, then mayor of London,

I can just picture a meeting between Livingstone and Ford. For our mayor the car is still king and he wants to build subways because, to paraphrase his words: “roads are meant for cars.” Ken Livingstone is the man who declared that London could no longer tolerate its gridlocked traffic which made life miserable in the city and produced enormous quantities of pollution. It is now very difficult, if not almost impossible to drive a car in to the centre of London. If you dare to drive it will cost you.

It was and still is an idea whose time has come. If I have occasion to be out and about in my car, using it only because the place I have to reach is seriously inconvenient by public transit. (I take the subway everywhere otherwise) I am always startled by the number of patient commuters who sit, one car-one driver, in traffic waiting to get home. In London they simply wouldn’t be driving downtown.

One of the points about the Bloomberg plan, and he made it plain in a TV interview, is that you can’t simply “give people what they want.” You have to try to explain to them why drastic moves have to be made. You have to have a dialogue that illuminates the problem of urban pollution. You have to persuade by conversion. Once people start to understand that in the long run it will be better, will cost less, and give us clean air and decent water. Bloomberg is evangelical about the responsibility of cities.

Contrast it with the mess we are in my city. Contrast a Bloomberg with a Ford. Go ahead. See who comes out on top.