Cars remain the travel method of choice for most in the US, so we train riders are not typical. The average US citizen takes only 1.3 trips by train a year compared with the 30 taken in the UK. But despite this it’s starting to look like the US is taking issues about congestion, travel modes and CO2 emissions more seriously. Several states like California are developing specific high speed rail policies.

President Obama kicked off the issue in January with a $8 billion plan under the Recovery Act, offering support to schemes giving priority to upgrading existing rail routes. The thinking is that high speed trains mostly on the East and West coast would provide an incentive for more travellers on shorter journeys to leave their cars behind in the garage.

But trans-continental rail travel is a different ball game. It’s a journey of 2400 miles from New York on the east coast to Seattle. Opening up the west took place in three stages. First came the expeditions of Lewis and Clark in 1804-06, followed by the journeying across the plains by the settlers with their horses and wagons. The steam trains arrived in the 1850s and by 1869 the first transcontinental line had been completed. The Great Northern railway finally reached Seattle in 1893.

The railroads created over 100 years ago are still owned by private companies, which concentrate on moving 40% of the nation’s freight slowly around the continent on huge long trains. There’s an inherent conflict here with the needs of high speed passenger trains, which need dedicated lines for a faster service and defined journey times. Providing such high speed routes in Europe and Japan has been a long term investment costing millions of dollars, which are now in the post global financial crisis not available in the US or anywhere else.

This is an area to watch over the next five years and could not only help to reduce US carbon emissions but also provide thousands of jobs for Americans to replace those lost in the motor industry, as it goes into long term decline. In the meantime we’re looking to try out the train next year from Chicago to Seattle.

The Accord was hammered out at the last minute meetings involving US President Obama and the leaders of China, India and Brazil – a reflection of the new multi-polar world that the 21st century is ushering in. To judge from conflicting accounts, China appears to have led the resistance to specific targets and international monitoring.

For all their talk and offers of cash and emissions targets, EU leaders – with their comparatively rich and prosperous populations – failed to stitch together a deal which could unite a deeply divided world. All we could find to cheer here was energy and climate Secretary Ed Miliband speaking up to ensure that even the Accord – a small step – was not thrown out on the final day.

Reducing carbon emissions is not easy. Providing green energy is expensive and can be controversial. Developing countries want the benefits that industrialisation can bring. Politicians, mindful of elections, know that they can’t count on public opinion to support mitigation policies.

All this is true, but we need leaders who will take bold decisions that can lead to low carbon economies and avoid the devastation that global warming will surely bring. With political will, solutions can be found; and we need to support the politicians who promote these solutions. One way you can make a personal contribution is by signing up with Avaaz.org – The World in Action, a global web movement committed to promoting positive action to protect our environment. We discuss in Good Practice some of the actions we are taking at The Larches.

This is not a dry academic exercise. Climate change is happening now as we stand on the eve of the twenty-tens decade. It is affecting large areas of the world. Glaciers are melting. Weather patterns are more volatile. People in Bangladesh live with the daily fear of rising water levels flooding their houses and leaving thousands destitute.

Other examples can be seen in John Vidal’s account in the Guardian (6 December) of a recent journey (see opposite) from Nepal to the Bay of Bengal; and in the Economist Special report Getting Warmer – Stopping climate change (5 December 2009), which includes a good summary article reviewing the evidence for global warming. More good sources are referenced in the Eco-friendly section of this Lakeland Belvedere website.

The possibilities for change are there. We need new green industries and a commitment to provide seed finance for them in the early stages. New technologies have transformed economies and so many facets of our life over the last two decades. Now we need green technologies, which can help limit carbon emissions and build a sustainable future for us all. We need to act now before it is too late.

POSTSCRIPT
In an article in The Guardian (January 1st, 2010) Government must ‘green economy and create jobs’ Lord Adair Turner, Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, spells out the practical implications involved in the last paragraph of this blog posting.