Roger.Hicks@welfen-netz.com
SIR - I understand Mr Davis's attitude towards the motorcar entirely [The car's the star, Feedback, 23 September 1999]. But he is forgetting - or refusing to acknowledge - the fact that there are six billion people living on our planet (Spaceship Earth), most of whom are just as keen to have their own car as he is.
Although only a fraction of its population is motorised, the Earth is already groaning under the strain that motor vehicles put on its limited natural resources and its finite carrying capacity. Long before everyone has his own car, the Earth's ecosystems (Spaceship Earth's life-support systems) will start to break down.
What that will mean hardly bears thinking about. The Earth is bountiful enough to provide us with all our needs. What it cannot do is provide for all our wants, no matter how desirable they may seem. It is high time that Mr Davis - and the rest of us - faced up to his fact of life (and death), if not for our own sakes, then for the sake of our children and coming generations.
