Janet Street-Porter: Katrina, Rita and gas-guzzling America

The only future for the US is to drive vehicles which don't use petrol and distribute goods via rail

Now, with the two hurricanes having a big impact on oil production and supply (half of the 16 refineries in the area remain closed) he's urging all Americans to drive less, use less fuel and conserve energy. Can this be the same man who refuses to sign up to the Kyoto protocol? Of course joined-up thinking was never Bush junior's forte, and there has been considerable outrage that as he made his plea for less travel of the non-essential variety, Republicans in Congress are fighting for tax breaks for oil companies who build refineries, as well as trying to get bans lifted, which prevent off-shore drilling as well as extracting oil from the Arctic National Park.

The mishandling by officials of the instruction to evacuate Houston meant that motorways were jammed for days and people suffered extraordinary inconvenience. Last Sunday, the same politicians issued a map showing which areas people could return to on what days.

This ham-fisted attempt at a staggered re-entry to the areas affected by Rita, was just risible, and as I write this the Mayor of New Orleans is at odds with the government about how many people should return to the city and when. The blanket coverage of Rita may be distasteful, but it is hard to understand here in Britain how shocked ordinary Americans were by the deaths and destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Those in its path were let down by their elected leaders in the most shocking way. It took a natural disaster to underline the sheer inequality that exists in the world's most powerful country. Just to emphasis the fact that many of the people who have plenty of everything still don't get it, the President's mum, Barbara Bush, made some disgraceful comments about the people in the New Orleans Superdome benefiting from the catastrophe because "many of them were on welfare".

I have been reading Kitty Kelley's book about the Bush dynasty, The Family. It did not sell particularly well in the USA, because the President's popularity had not started to wane when it appeared, and people still expected him, as Commander in Chief, to pull off a success in Iraq. But, with the US death toll in Iraq mounting daily, and the disasters in the South back home, perhaps more people will pick up Ms Kelly's well-researched, weighty tome and spend some time educating themselves about their President's background.

His father and most of the family have made fortunes out of speculating in the oil business. George Bush junior was a total disaster as an oil company executive - he never seemed to be able to find oil anywhere he drilled. But people kept investing in his schemes, because of dad's power. Both father and son have never had any interest whatsoever in the environment, or culture, the arts or indeed, the real world outside Texas. This litany of their intellectual limitations and xenophobia makes depressing reading.

All this makes the President's appeal to folks to drive less for the good of the country just another comedy turn. This is the fellow who has visited the devastated regions of the Gulf by motorcade, helicopter and jet seven times in the last couple of weeks. On each trip he's been accompanied by an army of press recording every photo-op, as well as squads of secret servicemen.

The appetite for driving less will never catch on in the US because of the scale of the place- and after a week filming in the state of Michigan, I can see why. People readily drive 50 miles in each direction to work. When they get there, every factory and office building is surrounded by acres of parking. Flying over Michigan every shopping mall and hotel is provided with an over-abundance of asphalt to accommodate the maximum number of cars. But, truthfully, Michigan also has hundreds of miles of empty forest, lakes, and farmland. It's under-populated, with roads stretching for miles in dreary grids. Public transport outside main cities is minimal.

The tax breaks available for driving environmentally friendly cars are not huge enough to make them attractive to the masses, and when General Motors announced some new models last week they carefully offered cars which operate on both kinds of fuel - hardly a major commitment. In fact they build some of the least fuel-efficient cars on the market, and have no real commitment to fuel economy whatsoever. Total oil consumption in the USA rose 16 per cent between 1990 and 2002, and now stands at 20 million barrels a day.

If current trends continue, the US will be importing 70 per cent of its requirements by 2025. It's a no-brainer. The only future for Americans is to drive vehicles which don't use petrol, and to distribute food and other goods via rail rather than the road.

But could the same thing happen here? Talking to Alastair Darling, the Secretary of State for Transport, at the Labour Party conference the other night, I wasn't particularly reassured. Sure, road pricing is inevitable, but it's years away yet. Meantime, the railways are full to bursting and it will take considerable investment and technological innovation before more trains can run on the tracks.

In the meantime, we should all be encouraged to drive less, and put more people in our cars. Darling is planning a car pool lane for the M1. But why did it take so long? We need bigger tax breaks for people who purchase cars that use alternative energy sources, and double the road tax on 4x4 vehicles not registered in rural areas. The only people who need these disgusting gas guzzlers are farmers, and so it should be a simple matter to make their purchase a taxable luxury, as with cigarettes, wine and spirits. I know that we all have the right to go on as many holidays as we like each year, using cheap airlines for mini breaks all over Europe. Mr Darling has not prevented new airports opening up all over the country to cater to this boom, and each one increases pollution exponentially. He may not be able to tax airline fuel, but he should be able to tax every air ticket and refuse to allow any more small airfields to be upgraded to accommodate jets. The trouble with being transport minister is that you have to be prepared to be unpopular - and very few politicians are capable of that.