Increasing the price of petrol is the best way to solve growing traffic and pollution problems.To what extent do you agree or disagree?What other measures do you think might be effective?

I do not agree with who says that a forced climb in the price of petrol would be the solution to traffic and pollution problems. I think other actions would be more effective than this one.

To begin with, the correlation between the price of petrol and traffic and pollution is less clear than it seems. People use cars mainly to go to their workplace, and for this reason they do it even if fuel costs increase. In my country, for example, the state has recently put heavy taxes on fuels, but the use of cars has not changed. Furthermore, there is an incredible amount of plastic in the world. Since plastic has a ridiculous price, it is highly unlikely that an increase in the price of petrol would bring a decline in its production.

Another problem related to this proposal is: how far is possible to control and adjust the price of petrol? If I had to answer this question, from my knowledge and experience, I would say that is simply impossible. In fact, petrol is traded on financial markets, and the forces of demand and supply decide its price. A state could, with the help of its central bank, manipulate the price, but only for a brief period; this because a continuous press of money would create a huge inflation, that is well known to be a serious problem.

Therefore, I believe that there are more intelligent solutions to the problems in question. One way to diminish traffic could be encouraging people to use public transport instead of cars. To do this the state should create parking spaces near stations, and increase the price of parking in big cities. On the other hand, the problem of plastic has the same importance. Wastes create pollution. The only possible solution to this is recycling. People should be educated that if we do not recycle wastes, pollution will continue to threaten our health.

To conclude, I do not believe that increasing the price of petrol would solve our problems. Traffic and pollution could be reduced with education and incentives to make people using less their cars and recycling.