From: Roger Hicks 
Roger.Hicks@spaceship-earth.de
Re: Motorised madness
Date: 21 December 1999
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SIR - Reading your interview with Lord Macdonald in Saturday's Telegraph was very depressing indeed [Battle on car use over, says Macdonald, 18 December 1999].

 Anyone who fails to recognise a "primary problem" in making cars affordable for the third of the UK population still without one is (I am sorry) an imbecile, and to make him a minister of transport is pure lunacy. 

If Britain were alone in the world it would be a different matter, but we are not. We share this beautiful, large but finite planet with almost six billion others, five-sixths of whom are also still without a car.

 Motorisation on the scale already prevalent in the Western world, where it is normal for every adult to own his or her own car is non-sustainable. 

If we persist in maintaining it, let alone increasing it even further, Earth's life systems will break down and we shall be off to join the dinosaurs. We can celebrate the new century knowing that it will be our last.

 

Electronic Telegraph