IEEP report prescribes policy to tackle threats of climate change and obesity
Mon 13 August 2007
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A new report highlights the role of car use in the twin crises of rising obesity and increasing carbon dioxide emissions. It says that encouraging people to walk short journeys now made by car could produce significant gains against both problems.
The report, by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and Adrian Davis Associates, finds that by returning to the walking patterns of 30 years ago, when car ownership was less common, people could help save up to 11 MtCO2 (15.4% of total emissions from passenger cars) and reduce the chances of becoming obese.
Focusing on the UK, the report says that the costs of such programmes are likely to be dwarfed by those that will be incurred by the National Health Service and society at large through inactivity, ill-health and premature death as a consequence of obesity (estimated at £8.2 billion per year). The authors claim that the proposals provide policy makers around Europe with a suggestion for a simple and relatively inexpensive way to tackle the two linked crises.
The main points of the argument are oulined in a press release:
• Since the Second World War, the continuous increase in car ownership has led to a dramatic decline in walking as a means of transport - muscle power gave way to fossil power.
• This report calculates that just by returning to the average distance walked by people in the UK without cars, the rising tide of obesity can be almost halted.
• At the same time, a substantial share of individuals' contribution to national carbon dioxide emissions could be avoided.
• The report goes on to argue that this could and should be done through renewed efforts to promote walking as transport. This would be vastly cheaper than dealing with the consequences of the obesity epidemic and climate change.
Some key findings from the report:
• 40% of all journeys in the UK are under 2 miles in length – distances easily covered by up to 30 minutes of brisk walking. Nonetheless, 38% of these journeys are currently by car.
• If a typical British adult were to walk just an hour more per week (equivalent to the difference in walking between a typical driver and a non-driver) this would counteract a weight increase of 2 stones over a decade, and a longer-term slide into obesity.
• This alone could make a major contribution to halting the trend of increasing obesity across the UK.
• The extra walking could displace at least 11 million tonnes of CO2 from cars – amounting to 15.4% of the total emissions from passenger cars.
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