Carbon offsetting again

I spent last weekend at the Joint Session (a major UK philosophical conference with about 250 delegates). It was hosted at a rather unpleasant campus which seemed to bear an uncanny resemblance to the surface of the moon—or particularly the moon as it would look if covered in a maze of rectangular concrete buildings—, on the edge of Bristol, currently known as UWE, though in days gone by it was called Bristol Poly. It's not a place I am keen to see again in my lifetime. As a colleague pointed out, if they'd done the abbreviation properly the University of the West of England would be known as University of the WOE.

We weren't originally supposed to be at the University of WOE, but at the real University of Bristol, which might have been better aesthetically, and certainly would have landed us in a more desirable urban environment (as it was, the only things within walking distance were Hewlett Packard's works and, I gather, some examples of the edge of the city retail park with its B&Q and so on). But thanks to Bristol University and its building programme, the conference had been relocated at rather short notice.

But the point of this post is not the place we were in, but the process of getting there. This is what they said on the conference information:

Directions to the UWE Frenchay Campus are available at www.uwe.ac.uk/maps/frenchay_directions.shtml. Note that the nearest train station is Bristol Parkway rather than Bristol Temple Meads.

The Philosophy Department at the University of Bristol operates a carbon off-set scheme. Any delegates wishing to minimize the environmental impact of their conference travel are requested to contact Finn Spicer: finn.spicer@bristol.ac.uk

Now when unpacked as a guide to how to get to Bristol this seems to me to say the following:

We assume that you will typically be coming by car. You'll need directions for how to get there which can be found on the web site mentioned. Some people prefer to come by train, but we don't specially recommend that. Bristol Parkway is nearer than Bristol Temple Meads, but it's not really very near and not really very convenient. We don't see much difference in environmental impact between coming by car and coming by train, and since we now run a carbon offsetting scheme, there's really no need to use the train or to worry at all about the impact of driving, as long as you're prepared to pay a few pence for someone else to do the tiresome bit of being green on your behalf, so you might as well drive, use the free parking on campus and just send us a bit of money to salve your conscience (if you have any: we're proud that we do have a conscience as you can see).

Now it seems to me that what they should have said is the following:

Although there is free parking on campus, we strongly urge you to consider travelling by train rather than by car. Bristol Parkway, with high speed trains from London, Didcot and South Wales, is only a five minute bus ride from campus and there are plenty of taxis to be had. Train travel accounts for far fewer carbon emissions than road travel, and your train journey will assist the Bristol University Philosophy Department's attempt to become carbon neutral in all its activities. Contributions to the carbon offsetting scheme can be made by contacting ... but such contributions should not be regarded as a substitute for a low carbon lifestyle.

I hope one would say something like that even if train travel were quite a lot more difficult than it was in this case.

Parking £3.20 all day

Parking £3.20 all day.

This is what it says on a large sign facing the railway just outside Norwich station.
It's obviously addressed to people travelling on the train. I assumed initially that this must be to allow commuters who catch the train from Norwich to see that they could park their car near the station for the day and then take the train (to London, say). It now occurs to me that it might be addressing those who commute into Norwich from Norfolk, Suffolk or wherever, suggesting that you could travel by car instead and here's a place to park that will be just as good as coming in by train.

I imagine some people whose train ticket costs more than £3.20 a day might be tempted to think they'd save some money that way. It's a sad situation that many people seem to judge their happiness and well-being by the immediate amount of money going in and out of their purses in obvious, measurable amounts.

One morning last week on Radio Norfolk there was another example of that. It was a discussion of the declining quality and increasing cost of the bus service. It's true that the service is declining and the ticket prices have risen sharply. That is at least partly due to the government cutting the grants that assist with provision of services to rural communities. Such is the government's commitment to the environment, and supporting efforts towards sustainable lifestyles.

But however much one laments the failure to subsidise country buses, here is a very stupid thought, uttered by one of the listeners who phoned in:

"The car park costs less than the bus fare so it's cheaper to drive in than to take the bus."

How many mistakes is this person making when she thinks like that?

The best way to get to Oxford

What's the best way to drive from Cambridge to Oxford?

The simple answer is, don't even try. Just take the train.

But a Sunday morning between 7.30 and 9.30 is probably the best time to sample the route by car, and it is quite pleasant then. Probably preferable to the trains, since one should, in general, never try to go anywhere by train on a sunday morning.

It crossed my mind, as we drove across by way of Bedford and Woburn and Aylesbury and so on, that the roads at that time of day were quite empty, and that if everyone in the country were to do what we do and hire a car about three times a year, that's how the roads would be at the busiest times.

And wouldn't we all be a lot happier then?

And then it struck me, as we looked for a parking space in the narrow streets of East Oxford, that if we all lived like that, then only one house in 100 would have a car on any one day of the year (or maybe two in every 100 if they hired for two days each, three times a year), and that car would probably not be parked in front of their house, because they'd be using it. So there would be no difficulty in parking, because the streets would be entirely empty of parked cars.

They'd be full of children playing of course, as they used to be. But that would be a delight, not a problem.

It's odd, it seems to me, that such a simple way to happiness should be so far beyond our grasp.