Saturday 17 June 2017

UK GOVERNMENT U-TURNS ON DIESEL CARS, BUT WHY DID THEY GET IT WRONG?

The UK government had been encouraging us to drive diesel vehicles since the early 2000's. The reason was to reduce our emissions of CO2, as they claim this will improve the climate, or prevent it deteriorating at some point in the future. Now they have been told by the EU that our vehicles are emitting too much nitrogen oxides (NOx) and to reduce this they are now trying to reduce the number of diesel vehicles. However they already knew that diesels produced more NOx gases (which are bad for those with lung problems like asthma). They claim they were duped by the car manufacturers who claimed that these emissions were being controlled. That is a poor excuse, as surely they ought to have tested these vehicles independently? What this shows is how easily the government can be fooled by accepting the word of others and go on to put in place very costly policies which they then discover are completely wrong.

In order to comply with their own Climate Change Act, the government would like to get us all to drive electric vehicles, or at least hybrid electric/petrol. They cannot do this straight away, as it would cause massive opposition from the public and massive costs to the government, so they are starting to "nudge" us in this direction by mandating councils to set up Clean Air Zones. They do not say what these zones will require, but it seems obvious that they will ban diesels - but will they go much further than that and only allow electric/hybrids? If so then they are going beyond what is necessary to make the air clean enough to be safe. They would be effectively banning diesel and petrol engines from our town centres in order to comply with their so-called climate change commitments.

Regular readers may have noticed that I have recently put the cost of the UK Climate Change Act on the top right of the blog. It is an eye-watering figure of £300 to 400 billion up to 2050. It is rarely stated publically but should be shown as often as possible. The benefits to the public of this massive spend I have said are NONE.

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