What is GAME?
GAME (the Stafford based Group Against Motorway Expansion) is
fighting against the widening of 51 miles of the M6 through
Staffordshire and Cheshire (from near Birmingham to to near Manchester).
GAME originally formed in 2004 to fight a 4 laned, private, tolled Expressway that had horrendous land-take, was proposed. It can now be seen that these plans and their subsequent withdrawal were a highly successful ploy designed to lull the public into acceptance of widening - the lesser (by far) of the two evils; and now GAME has the difficult task of re-energising the public.
Supporters of the widening claim that it is essential for the regeneration and economic growth of the area, but this is a spurious argument and at the current estimated cost of almost £3 billion (nearly £58 million per mile) the proposal is an outrageous waste of money.
The real cause of congestion is not that the motorway is too narrow, but that THERE IS TOO MUCH TRAFFIC - throughout the whole country.
It is absolutely essential that this widening (or even the proposed 'Hard Shoulder Running') does not happen. There being a decent environment for future generations depends on society making genuinely sustainable plans today; Britain (and the other overdeveloped nations of the world) have to cut back on their hedonistic over consumption.
G.A.M.E.'s alternative to motorway widening.
Rather than expand the U.K. road network, a more acceptable solution to the congestion of British roads, and the M6 in particular, would be a reduction in the amount of traffic. It is suggested that this could be achieved by a Long Term restructuring of society's infrastructure, designed to reduce society's current excessive transportation needs – for both humans and goods.
It is essential that additional short term relief is also given by the immediate wholesale implementation of numerous improved traffic management techniques, designed primarily to ease traffic flow
If instead of attempting to ameliorate the effect of planning policies that encourage the siteing of developments that necessitate excessive movement of goods and humans; this country were to adopt planning policies that reduced this demand for transportation, we would not need more roads. It is essential that the siteing of all future developments is dependent upon reducing the required carbon emittance of the users.
Unfortunately, many of the developments that have taken place in recent decades have 'high transportation demands', and therefore a short/medium term reduction in the massive number of cars that contribute towards congestion is necessary. This could be achieved by the temporary (?) introduction of a motorway-based National Coach Network similar to the one advocated by Storkey and Monbiot ( http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/12/05/life-coaching/#more-1034 )
GAME suggest that the these options give an acceptable solution that is greatly superior to the ridiculously costly and short-sightedly regressive widening of the M6 motorway - provided the measures are enacted in their entirety as soon as possible. Unless planning measures with the aim of reducing society's transportation needs are introduced, then the result will merely be a short term relief leading to an even more massive problem in years to come when the more severe effects of Climate Change will be combined with the difficulties caused by fuel shortages.
Climate Change is already having seriously adverse effects on the global economy and the global environment (there have been flood refugees from numerous South Sea coral islands, New Orleans,and probably sites in south Yorkshire and now Gloucestershire; there are severe droughts around the world and as well as millions of starving humans, we now have hundreds if not thousands of Polar Bears starving due to ice melt.)
It is widely predicted that there will soon be a global oil shortage ( The Financial Times, Tues., July 10th ; The Independent, Thursday, June 14th) - the consensus centres around 2017-20, although many experts think it could earlier - like NOW.
This shortage will (is?) caused not so much by a shortage of oil in the ground but our inability to get it out and then refine it fast enough,and should we be foolish enough to increase our rate of oil extraction then the 'oil peak' (i.e. time of maximum output) will take place well before this general prediction of around the year 2020, and the subsequent 'cold turkey' caused by a lack of oil will be all the more severe.
In order to tackle both Climate Change and Peak Oil, the British government needs to introduce T.E.Qs. (Tradable Energy Quotas [a.k.a. D.T.Q. - Domestic Tradable Quotas] - http://www.teqs.net/). TEQs is a system to enable nations to reduce their emissions along with their use of fossil fuels, and to ensure fair access to all. The government should also be giving serious consideration to moving away from a fossil fuel based economy towards David Flemings 'Lean Economy' -
http://www.theleaneconomyconnection.net/index.html
- a strategy that in itself requires less transportation and traffic.
Of course we also need to persuade other countries to do the same.
Hopefully the Climate Change Bill is a step in the right direction, and since it contains the magic words 'Contraction and Convergence' as a sub-title it should be more than a step in the right direction. Contraction and Convergence is a global framework for an assured limit to future carbon limits suggested by The Global Commons Institute in 1999.
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