And our kids are dying, too.
What if cheap oil runs out? Yes, we can exploit relatively expensive sources like shale and liquefied coal. But costs will be enormous. Planes can’t fly on much other than jet fuel (kerosene) and use vast quantities of it. What will be their prospects twenty or thirty years from now, especially with real concerns about the greenhouse contribution of jets (about 3 per cent of the total, according to the industry)? After the present boom in cheap international travel, could there be a major slump? Could that be why Boeing has invested in the smaller, more versatile 7E7? Could the giant Airbus double-decker, with its 550 seats, prove to be a size commitment too far?
I sat in Boeing’s mock-up of the 7E7 at one of their labs in Seattle. The first thing you notice is the deliberate effort to make you feel that you are really flying in the sky, instead of trying to pretend you are merely in a cramped, earthbound canteen-cum-dormitory. Arched cabin ceilings painted in blue and designed to give an impression of celestial height take away the enclosed, life-in-a-tube sensation, and even the windows are elongated, connecting you to the horizon. It’s more serene and even more natural than our customary flying cattle enclosures. Even the air is clean: ‘As pure as that you’d get from an operating theatre,’ I was told by the smooth-talking Boeing lab chief, who looked like a cross between Clark Gable and Biggies.
But what about those aircraft emissions? While they are only 3 per cent of the carbon total (compared with 22 per cent for ground transport), the effect of these gases is substantial-enhancing greenhouse problems and changing the chemistry of the upper atmosphere. There is already discussion of changing the preferred altitude of planes to reduce the damage caused by ‘N-trails’, the oxides of nitrogen that pour from their exhausts. There is also talk of ways to reduce delays at take off and landing, both responsible for substantial emissions
So what does the future hold for a means of transport that has determinedly and successfully wooed the budget traveller? The costs of the new draconian security measures and rocketing fuel prices could return air travel to the exclusive option it was 30 years ago. I now approach an international flight with all the enthusiasm I would bring to 24-hour root-canal therapy. I suspect others feel the same, especially with the prospect of having to eschew their books and laptops as on-board restrictions get worse.
There isn’t any other quick option for Australians who want to go overseas, so stoicism may have to go up yet another few notches. But surely fast trains would be a good inter-city alternative, if only governments were prepared to invest in infrastructure? As for the supersonic flying revolution, it now seems further away than ever. Concorde is grounded, and the experiments at the University of Queensland with the Scramjet (at upwards of eight times the speed of sound), though successful, are unlikely to have anybody other than daredevils such as Richard Branson (in vigorous old age) hopping on the promised three-hour flight from Sydney to London.
Private space travel appears more likely. SpaceShipOne has had successful trials in America and two Australians, Wilson da Silva and Alan Finkel of Cosmos magazine, have already booked to be the first Australians to make the seven-hour frolic.
Going to Mars will take much longer, and is likely to be preceded by the landing of an expandable base made from the fuel casings of the spaceship. It is likely that the first venturers will be asked to stay there. Who would want to take a one-way ticket to another planet? Well, Lord Rees, for one. The President of the Royal Society of London told me that making only one journey is safer. Besides, he added, in the old days of exploration, folk were sanguine about not coming home!
Back on Earth: trains first carried passengers in South Wales just over 200 years ago. They flourished in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries; but in Australia and Britain, they’ve since gone backwards. Visitors who come to see us on the South Coast of New South Wales and take the trundler from Sydney cannot believe the time it takes to grind through the short distance. Has no one noticed France ’s TGVs (trains à grande vitesse) or Japan ’s bullet trains, which travel on time, CBD to CBD, and make the plane alternative look ridiculous?
Like Concorde and the Apollo missions to the moon that ended in 1972, modern trains appear to be a dream that faded. Despite our budget surpluses, we are unwilling to invest in infrastructure and railways cost plenty. Yet many of us would be more than willing to sit in the comfort of a TGV that could take us from Melbourne
Future Perfect to Sydney, or Sydney to Brisbane, in four hours-only about one hour longer than the present best estimate of door-to-door trips using air travel. The British Conservatives discovered the promise of better rail travel in 2006, observing that magnetically elevated trains could go at over 500 kph, as they already are doing, experimentally, in Asia. Cut that inter-city link to 50 minutes! In Holland they have the Maglev, part train, part bus- it can switch from ordinary roads to supertracks, run on fuel cells or batteries, and reach speeds of 250 kph.
The Rail Infrastructure Corporation has noted that our spending in 2005 in Australia on such essentials as rail and bridges was $28.5 billion below what it needed to be, and that deft investment in infrastructure would increase Australia ’s productivity by 10 per cent.
What of light trains? Their development in the northern suburbs of Perth appears to have been a howling success. Peter Newman, a professor at Murdoch University and adviser to the Premier of Western Australia, believes commuters will take trains willingly if a) they are faster than cars and b) they come so often that timetables are unnecessary. A UTS study has also found that travellers will opt for public transport if it is convenient, safe and affordable.
What is needed is a revolution based on total costing. Add the fuel, pollution, delays, real-estate costs and trauma, and then consider the option of making buses and trains free. Some studies indicate that the price of tickets covers only their collection. Remember the remarkable cheerfulness and freedom Sydney experienced during the weeks of the Olympic Games? Cars almost invisible, public transport laid on-what could this be like in the long term? Would a short series of experiments of this kind be worth considering? If the petrol price rises and pollution concerns continue, maybe the unthinkable will be tried.
Won’t new fuels come to the rescue? Hydrogen, cars running on water, even solar cars (which manage to glide regularly from Darwin to Adelaide)!
Hydrogen is a real prospect, but distant. It’s an expensive way to produce and distribute energy. A hydrogen economy may not emerge generally until well after 2027. Its contribution by then will be substantial, however, and-so I was assured by Professor Omar Yaghi at UCLA (University of California Los Angeles), one of Popular Science magazine’s Top 10 stars of American science of 2006-hydrogen may flourish as the energy source in laptops and mobile phones before it leaps successfully into transport. Even then, containing costs will be tricky. Geophysicist cum economist Peter Terzakian was quoted in The Australian as saying ‘If all 230 million cars in the US were to switch from petrol to hydrogen, so much electricity would be required to create the hydrogen that 350 new nuclear plants would be needed. Or more than 1000 coal-fired power stations.’
Cars driven by water have turned up regularly as a hot prospect, ever since Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the then Premier of Queensland, drooled over them a generation ago. The idea is a variant on the hydrogen theme: use the electrolysis of water to separate hydrogen and oxygen (as schoolchildren used to see done in science in their first year), harness the hydrogen and expel the oxygen. It may work one day, but don’t expect it to break any land speed records soon.