It has taken German politicians three years to agree how cars should be taxed such that the tax reflects – at least partially – the amount of damage that their emissions do to the environment. US politicians spent most of the last eight years in denial that the climate could be influenced by humans. And there has been almost no progress on climate change since the Kyoto conference 11 years ago. Apart from a large amount of hot air produced by politicians.
It just isn’t good enough. When you read the interview in this week’s New Scientist with James Lovelock (the person who invented the Gaia theory, that the Earth is a self-regulating system), you’ll see why. Lovelock thinks we haven’t got a hope in hell of checking the damage done to the planet by carbon emissions; with the consequence, that up to 90% of the human population on the Earth will be wiped out by the end of this century. In other words, it is likely the population will drop from the current figure of just under 7 billion, to less than a billion.
well, what went through my head yesterday was: why tax cars at all?
Do tell more: why did you think that?
- because we’re doomed in the long term, so we may as well carry on using cars as long as possible?
- because if we didn’t tax them, more people would buy cars and save the auto-industry from the finance crisis?
Well, money makes the world go round.
Leyman Brothers knew well before Sep 08 how deep they were in, but nobody wanted to drop the bomb beforehand, not before all was lost.
The car industry is concerned about output of cars, not of CO2 (an average household with two medium-sized sedans emits more than 20,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year).
As for myself – I have no stocks and no car. I have been walking for more than 45 years…
http://www.pension-sprachschule.de/index.php/general/i-have-been-walking-for-more-than-45-years/