Car Engines/Global Warming

Well what's the views on Global Warming? Well here is mine.

Personally I think the environment goes in cycles, so a lot of this weather/global warming happens anyway. The scientists can prove this. There was the time the Thames froze in the 15&1600's - well it had a little help as arches on London Bridge were spaced so the water flow was impeded. But I digress. The cold spell still froze the Thames and we bear baited, which is the equivalent to MTV today I guess, and we cooked whole cows out in the middle of the river. Now in the late 90s and noughties, it's the turn to put on your shorts and catch some rays. Oh, by the way, one of my readers - and they are few and far between at the moment - pointed out to me that this cold snap lasted until the 1800's.

However, there are those of us out there that probably think man does have a bit of an impact too. It is industry and cars that are to blame here. So we have had the Kyoto agreement, that the biggest polluters didn't want to sign up to, to reduce emissions. So lets point a finger at the Yanks here. "I don't want to sign up, because it will cost the U.S jobs". Well Mr Bush, it could also have created some, in the fact you could corporately police the emissions. We all know that was just a crappy ploy not to cheese the voters off, so that you got elected again. Thank god for small mercies. You wont get a 3rd term. Lets face it, you aren't Franklin D. Roosevelt .

So that never really got off the ground. We can pollute the world, because we cant police industry. I would like to thank India, China and the Good Ol' U.S. of A for killing a planet and we all have an out break of asthma to look forward to.

As for the cars chucking out pollution. That should be a little easier. Now why hasn't anyone in the Department of Transport or what ever Mr Blair or Mr Brown may have deemed to call it now, come up with the solution?

Well it is freedom of choice on what cars we drive. And that's what our grandparents fought for. But there will always be the selfish idiots that live in the city that want to drive their 4*4 tanks on the school run to the bottom of their road, and others that can afford the Mercs and Astons although we have neither the space or the speed limits to test these gleaming hunks of car to the max. We don't want to drive the Ladas of the cold war 50's & 60's, and Henry Ford's "in any colour you like as long as its black!" - because we have this choice.

So what's the solution, you ask? Well here it is in a nut shell. Get the government to pass a law that states all engines must produce more than 35-40mpg. A economic Jag, Merc or Aston surely is better than an uneconomical 10 mpg car. If we have the technology to make them go faster than 150 mph, it must be there to make them more fuel efficient. Now by my reckoning, this cuts pollution too. Another gripe I have, but this one is fairly minor, is this. Why have a car that goes 150mph when the speed limit is only 70 - not that we adhere to the limits! The good thing is we will have less stupid genes in the gene pool when the idiots plough into trees and kill themselves. Bonus you say? I say its waste of a life for going to fast.

Cut the tube fares to a pound a day, The Oyster Card is great for the locals, but tubes rip off the tourists unless they have Oysters as well. It is £4 to go from Embankment to Charring Cross - if they didn't know it was 100 yards away, all well and good you say. But what if things were so cheap it would deter people from "not" paying. Any country world wide has a cheaper tube/train net work than us, and we invented the bloody things! My old economics teacher gave me the concept of demand and supply- if things are a glut and priced so cheap, people will want them (up to a point).

By the way if you wanted to go bio-diesel, there was a tax on the bio-fuel you could make in your garden out of used chip fat! Is that an incentive to switch, No. However I believe someone at HMS Government (god bless him for the common sense) has now adjusted it so that if you make it, but not in an oil production grand scale, you don't need to pay anything.

Man is the most destructive animal on the planet. A bit of consideration and thoughtfulness, a bit unselfishness, and for each and everyone of us to show a willingness to do a little bit, and we should be alright.