Dear Sir/Madam,

I was very sorry to read that Edinburgh's car-sharing project has not been a success  (Car-share scheme proves a flop, 29 January 2001), although I suspect that from a number of your editors it elicited some self-satisfied chuckles: the inevitable end of a crazy idea.

In fact, it wasn't only a very good idea, but an essential one, if cars are to have any role to play in a sustainable future.

For the level of global motorisation to reach current North American and West European levels will mean a 6-fold increase in the present number of motor vehicles on the world's roads. Yet our planet's life-supporting ecosystems are already groaning under the strain of the present 500 million..

For my part, it is not the motor car that I will be sorry to see go, but our civilisation which it is threatening to take with it - because so many silly, infatuated, addicted, or economically dependent people refuse or are unable to see their folly and to let the motorcar (i.e. individual motorisation) go.