First of all there’s an obvious discrepancy between government policy (in the UK and elsewhere) to reduce CO2 emissions, and the rampant propping up of the car industry. Why is the collapse of Rover such a bad thing if we’re trying to reduce the number of cars and they make some of the most environmentally unfriendly models around (Range Rover)? Also it’s small wonder people feel the need to buy new cars every 2 years and there are so many SUV’s around when every second advert on the TV (what I’ve seen of it) and billboards is for some 300g/km SUV. The huge TV screen at Edinburgh’s Wavereley station last week, right above the timetable where you can’t avoid looking was a continuously looping TV advert for a big fat Volkswagen 4WD. The mandatory inclusion of the CO2 emissions is a good thing but in my opinion, the ads should carry health warnings like cigarette packets. For an SUV to be the main thing advertised in a station seems somewhat ironic when the government is trying to encourage people to use trains instead of SUV’s.
The best way to do this BTW would be to make them arrive on time. On last week’s trip to the UK I unfortunately failed to break my 20 year run of intercity train trips with at least one hour’s delay on at least one leg. The last leg of the journey was supposed to end at Birminham International airport, but (we were not informed) that there were “Engineering Works” so it in fact bypassed that station and meant I arrived 1.5 hours later than I should have done, by using the bus service. So that means I can still claim that not a single train trip of over 1/2 an hour in the last 20 years has arrived without at least 1 hr delay on at least one leg of the journey. There is a feedback effect due to the fact that I don’t use it so often now but…
Finally on the policy of putting headlights on during the day (in Italy it’s mandatory to have your headlights on during the day). It does seem that it saves a lot of lives so it may well be justified – see. But nobody seems to think about what a waste of energy that is – millions of cars using 4X50Watt light bulbs all day is a huge waste of energy. I’m wondering if that law was the result of lobbying by the oil industry.