Greenpeace New Zealand Weblog

Traffic on the Avenue des Champs-elysees, Paris, France (CC) boulanger.IE

Bertrand Delanoe, the Mayor of Paris, has proposed a greener way to travel in the City of Light: Autolib’, a self-service electric car rental system.

My name is Francios – I’m from France but at the moment I’m an intern here in the Greenpeace NZ office. Those who have been in Paris know that Paris is the kind of exhilarating city that would be perfect without its cars. Every single place you go, you see cars: Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysees and, of course, the Arc de Triomphe. The Parisian way of driving a car is infamous in France and most of the non-Paris-inhabitants don’t even dare to drive in the city unless they really have to.

Cue a system where people can “borrow” an electric car for a period of time. 4,000 cars will be available, half in Paris and the other half in the suburbs. Read more »

Even though it’s not actually part of my job at Greenpeace, as a keen cyclist and climate change activist, I try to keep an eye on what’s going on with transport in NZ.

As you all probably know, if you’ve ever tried to take a bus or train in NZ, the transport sector in NZ is in a sorry state. Public transport is appalling, we have extremely high rates of car ownership, and greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector are skyrocketing.

However, the good news is there are lots of great campaigns being run by volunteers around NZ to try and get more sustainable transport. I mainly know about Auckland based groups although I’m sure there are lots of others going on. Read more »