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Oil threat prompts call for green industrial revolution
David Mason, March 16th 2010, Climate change, General, Transport
Soaring oil prices may drive politicians to take tough action to create a low-carbon economy while sceptics are still arguing the toss over climate change.
The era of cheap oil is ending and, unless we take urgent measures to reduce our dependence on it, Britain – and by extension other oil-importing countries – faces a crisis as early as 2015, according to the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security.
Its latest report, which calls for a “green industrial revolution” was launched a few weeks ago by a panel of high-profile business leaders: Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, Phllip Dilley, chairman of Arup, Ian Marchant, CEO of Scottish and Southern Energy, Brian Souter, CEO of Stagecoach Group, Jeremy Leggett, chairman of Solarcentury, and Will Whitehorn, president of Virgin Galactic.
We’re used to hearing this call from environmentalists and climate change campaigners, but these leaders come to the same conclusion based purely on the availability of oil. The message: regardless of whether or not you believe in man-made climate change, we still have to decarbonise our economy.
The taskforce claims that within the next decade, possibly as early as 2015, we will have reached peak oil - the maximum rate at which we can pump oil out of the ground. It forecasts that prices will soar because demand from developing countries is still growing and because new oil reserves are increasingly expensive to exploit.
Developed world economies have been built on the premise of cheap and plentiful oil, so shortages and high prices are likely to affect vast areas of our lives, causing social, economic and political disruption. We use oil for transport, heating, fertilisers and plastics - so high prices will feed through into more expensive food, travel, utility bills and goods in our shops. The poorest people are likely to be worst hit.
Countries which rely on oil imports will be badly hit. Although North Sea oil is still flowing, the UK has been a net importer since 2006, and the Taskforce warns that it could face a balance of payments crisis by the middle of the decade.
No wonder then that the report is called: ‘The oil crunch – a wake-up call for the UK economy’. It makes an explicit link with the credit crunch and warns that the UK must not be caught out again and needs to take action now.
The report calls for the new UK government, after the election, to work with local authorities, business and consumers to put in place policies to deal with the threat of peak oil. Key recommendations include support for low-carbon transport technology and sustainable bio-fuels; a focus on energy efficiency and the development of alternative sources of energy, including renewables and nuclear; and incentives to encourage the public to adopt greener behaviour.
The danger of framing the argument for a low-carbon economy solely in terms of climate change is that many people remain determined sceptics. The science is complex, scandals like the University of East Anglia emails shake public faith, and many feel they are being asked to take painful action now to avert a distant and nebulous threat.
In contrast, peak oil offers a clear and present danger. Oil is part of our daily life, we’ve all experienced the pain of petrol price spikes and it’s easy to understand the damaging consequences of a sustained increase in prices. Peak oil could just be the unambiguous threat we need to galvanise the green industrial revolution.
Carbon in our roads and rails – the bigger picture
Lorna Pelly, December 14th 2009, Built environment, General, Transport
Should an engineer designing a new road worry about the embodied carbon of a traffic cone? Should they be calculating the carbon sink opportunity of putting a shrubbery in the middle of a roundabout?
Perhaps not, but they should be considering the further maintenance and operation associated with the project and yes – the million dollar question - they should definitely be thinking about the 34 million cars registered in the UK which could drive on the new road.
Traditionally, design and build infrastructure projects have concentrated on just that - delivering a new asset ready for use, and then handing this over for operation. Anything beyond that - maintenance or repair, or the ongoing use of the asset - simply didn’t fall under the remit of the designer.
Over time however, contracts have expanded in scope, and contractors are now often expected to take on the first five or ten years of operation and maintenance to ensure they plan for the future. Any serious ambitions to rethink our approach to infrastructure to reduce carbon also need to take this wider, whole-life approach.
To take one example, when specifying a motorway central reservation with low carbon in mind, a road engineer may well opt for a metal barrier rather than the full concrete block. But if they were asked to think about the use of the road over the next 50-100 years and the maintenance of that central reservation, they might come to a different conclusion. The metal barrier – though lower in embodied carbon – is likely to be replaced more often than the concrete one, each time requiring a lane to be shut down, causing congestion and consequently a more significant whole-life carbon output.
Four major clients and experienced delivery partners working in infrastructure teamed up with Forum for the Future to think about a consistent method of approach for more holistic carbon management. Through the Engineers of the 21st Century programme, The Highways Agency, Network Rail (supported by RSSB), Atkins and Balfour Beatty tasked young engineers from each organisation to develop a way of assessing and managing the whole-life carbon of an infrastructure project. They came up with a carbon framework, a set of guidance principles and methods of assessment to start developing a common approach for carbon management.
Infrastructure projects, such as building or renewing roads or rail tracks, can take years in the design and build stages, involving a vast list of stakeholders and partners. To manage projects of this size, you have to break them down into contractual stages, supplier frameworks, scope of works and so on, all of which lead towards working within preset boundaries. But what we really want to know at the start of a project is ‘what will be the full carbon impact of doing this?’ or ‘which of our three major options would be lowest carbon overall?’
If the scope of infrastructure projects is expanded to include maintaining and using assets as well as building them, the first challenge is to understand what then falls within the full boundary of each project. If you are considering the impact of people driving on a new or improved road, do you need to also consider the embodied carbon of the cars? And when the construction phase causes congestion or diversions on existing roads, or those popular bus replacement services when railways are being maintained – should that be included in the project carbon total as well? And what about the embodied carbon of the sandwiches eaten by the construction workers on the site, or the paint on the white lines that need to be touched up 20 years later – do we really have to include that much detail to get a full picture?
The carbon framework offers general rules of thumb that will help with these tricky questions. It suggests that first, you should consider all carbon caused directly by a project. Once you have drawn the big circle around the full impact of the project, you can prioritise what carbon you will actively manage and, perhaps more controversially, what carbon you can dismiss because either you cannot influence it or because it is insignificant.
The framework sets out three main categories: carbon you will report (all carbon within the boundary of the project); carbon you will manage (significant, controllable and reducible carbon within the boundary); and carbon you will influence (significant, reducible carbon that may be in or out of the boundary).
It is in this influence box that we can start putting some big issues. A client or designer may not be able to control the number or type of cars driving on a road, but they can influence how they drive with smart design and traffic management. And the carbon reductions available from these kinds of interventions are significant.
The objective is really to enable smarter management of carbon. As carbon becomes an increasingly important factor in projects, the first reaction is to grab whatever data is available, apply some carbon conversion factors and set a reduction target. However, as our understanding matures we need to take a step back and think about where we can get the biggest and quickest carbon reductions – moving on from the low hanging fruit to the big, juicy fruit.
We need serious conversations about a project’s overall carbon impact at the early decision and design stage, informed by clear carbon estimates, in order to sensibly plan for lower-carbon infrastructure.
Mark Ellingham: Air travel must help cut CO2
, October 12th 2009, Futures, Transport, Travel and tourism
Hurrah for Tourism 2023, airing so many issues that have been engaging so many of us involved in the travel industry. Is a travel industry sustainable? Can it in some way clean up its own act, or at least clean up its own CO2 emissions? And if climate is changing apace, what on earth might be in store?
I came into the travel industry in the early 1980s, when I set up Rough Guides. Although back then I must say that I hadn’t thought of travel, at least not its independent wing, as an industry. At Rough Guides we were just writing books to inform people about the countries they visited, while most of the small, independent operators we dealt with were enthusiasts first, business folk second, and often driven by a passion to get involved with destinations and communities where they felt strong bonds.
Nor had I thought very much about the travel industry’s effect on the environment, beyond the sorry over-development of mainstream resorts. For back in the 1980s, there wasn’t much observable effect in many of the countries we covered: even in countries like Peru or India or Morocco, where tourism is today a significant part of the economy. And crucially, there was no popular perception about climate change, or about the role aviation emissions play.
When a year or so ago, I was asked to take part in the discussions out of which Tourism 2023 was shaped, the landscape was altogether different. Although I had by then left Rough Guides, to set up an environment imprint for Profile Books, I had a sense of guilt, almost a feeling of shame, about having been a part of the travel industry for so long. And I think that sense is shared, in rather perplexed fashion, by much of the industry. Certainly among the independent travel sector, the sector I know best, which is populated on the whole by thoughtful souls, who care deeply about the countries where they organise trips and tours. People and companies who for many years have been trying to ensure that their brand of tourism puts something back into local communities, by encouraging genuinely local development, supporting local infrastructure, and often putting money into aid projects in areas they know there will be real benefit.
Which is why I think Tourism 2023 is so important – and why it is so good that it has had partners like ABTA and British Airways involved. We need to make sure that the future of travel becomes positive, delivering benefits to the communities we visit. And, crucially, we need to somehow find a golden bullet to make tourism a “low carbon, low impact industry” as the report sets out as a primary aim. That is a vision we must all advance. And perhaps it is one that tourism actually can deliver, to show other sectors the way forward. Aviation, of course, is the key, as an area that is currently unsustainable in its contribution to carbon emissions, and is potentially disastrous if it grows as governments predict.
We need an industry that sets out its store: to remove every gram of CO2 that we emit. Better than that: why don’t we set out to remove twice as much CO2 as we emit? Turn tourism into an industry leader in removing emissions.
There is enough money in the industry to make this happen, and there is evidence that the technology to do so is emerging. Klaus Lackner, at Columbia University, has developed a working prototype of a carbon scrubber that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere, anywhere in the world. If his technology were to go into production right now, Lackner estimates that it would cost around $200 to remove each ton of CO2. Some travellers would be happy to pay that cost today. But with mass production, Lackner estimates a CO2 removal cost dropping to around $35 a ton. That would add a very manageable extra cost to flights: $50 on a return flight from London to New York, $10 for London to Madrid.
We need to apply the pressure to make that happen – urgently.
Mark Ellingham co-founded Rough Guides and currently runs a green and ethical publishing list for Profile Books. He is a member of the Tourism 2023 Steering Committee.
Yellow peril, or sustainability gold?
James Taplin, March 17th 2009, Transport
Continuing our explorations of links between ICT and sustainability that are low on glamour, but high on impact, our latest subject is image capture vehicular-velocity management solutions – or speed cameras to you and me.
I suspect that this may be a subject that generates greater extremes of passion than tropical deforestation and indeed, until recently, I was a frothing camera curser myself. In the last few weeks, however, three things have happened to reconcile me to the yellow sentinels and convince me that one class of speed camera at least – the average speed check – may in fact be a powerful tool in the climate change armoury.
The first was attending a presentation of work commissioned by the Sustainable Development Commission, and conducted by Jeremy Green into the interface between transport and technology. This included a piece of research by the UK Energy Research Council which found that simply enforcing current speed limits would save a million tonnes of CO2 per year, with another million achievable if the maximum limit was dropped by a further 10 mph.
The second eureka moment came at a public services conference into intelligent transport solutions - the headline sponsor of which was Speed Check services. As usual, towards the end of the first plenary session there was the ‘word from the sponsors’, and I settled back and began to switch off. However, instead of the thinly-veiled sales pitch I was expecting, I learned about plummeting accident rates (down 60 per cent in average speed check areas), largely through reduced variability of traffic speed, and reductions in the number of motorist penalty fines.
My conversion was completed on the road to Bristol whilst moving my growing family to our new home. There are currently about four sets of temporary average speed check cameras in either direction on the M4 between London and Bristol, and I went back and forth through them repeatedly during the move. These didn’t bother me too much in the underpowered and overloaded van, but tested my resolve a lot more during the final excited family run to our new house in the car. I could feel my newfound camera goodwill beginning to evaporate at the indignity of being asked to put literally minutes on my total journey time. . . . and then sunshine broke through the clouds of fury and frustration in a moment of enlightenment. . . . .
Cruising along at a sedate 50 I realised that the previous few days had been delightfully . . . predictable. They had involved no unexpected delays caused by other peoples’ accidents – a tragic but expected part of most long car journeys – and had actually allowed me get where I needed to be when I wanted to be there. In fact, the logistics of the previous two days would have been impossible were it not for the ability to plan and marshal help precisely when it was needed, and get to and fro in sufficient time to complete the move within the tight timescale.
So there we have it. Emissions saved by driving at more optimal speeds, emissions saved from reduced congestion, emissions saved from reduced wear on road surfaces, emissions saved from avoided infrastructure repairs following accidents. Taxpayer costs saved from disruption, lost earnings, highways services, and clean-ups. More predictable journey times, and less stressful journey experiences. . . . . . brothers and sisters, what sane person amongst ye can still continue to harden your hearts to these unsung yellow heroes of the road?
Image: Russ Witherington
Flying blind
Rupert Fausset, January 16th 2009, Transport
So the long-feared announcement has finally been made, and the British government has approved the construction of a third runway at London’s Heathrow airport. Environmentalists worldwide, and the millions living under the flightpath, have their heads in their hands as the integrity of climate policy is cut to pieces.
But all is not as it seems. There are many stages yet before the houses are demolished, the concrete poured and the new flights thunder over. Spare a thought for the executives of BAA, and their Spanish masters Ferrovial, who have to decide whether or not the £13bn or so the new runway will cost will eventually translate into solid long term profits and big bonuses, or whether the old adage might just be true
- that if something can’t go on forever, it won’t.
Consider this: in May 2008 the economy had yet to feel the real chill winds of recession, and airline traffic was booming. But the frenetic global activity from Heathrow to Hyderabad was sucking up every drop of oil that could be produced, driving its price to $147 a barrel. At this level the airlines could not make an operating profit, however many people they carried. As BA’s Chief Financial Officer stated: “Long run fuel prices at those sorts of levels would result in pretty fundamental changes in our industry”. This could mean capacity cuts, ticket price increases, rationalisation – all due to excessive growth.
In other words, this global boom in air travel was not just environmentally unsustainable, it was – and is – economically unsustainable. We don’t have enough oil to fuel it, so it chokes on its own success. Ironically, the recent downturn may have saved large portions of the industry, because falling demand slashed the oil price as well as air traffic. So although many airlines were forced to cut capacity, they now make a better profit on the reduced operations, and passenger numbers at BAA’s airports fell last year.
The implications for Heathrow expansion are clear. Only a resumption of global airline growth can give BAA a return on the huge cost of the new runway. But those same conditions are most likely to drive oil demand – and its price – right back to the peaks we saw last year and beyond, forcing up ticket prices and so constraining air traffic growth. There is no prospect of new cheap oil supplies – as the boss of Shell UK has warned: “The era of easy oil is over”. BAA may just have been handed a poisoned chalice by the Brown government, but it doesn’t have to drink from it.
Third runway turning point
Jonathon Porritt, January 16th 2009, Forum founders, Transport
Yesterday’s decision on the third runway at Heathrow marks a critical turning point in UK politics: the point at which the Labour Party turned its back on the future.
What makes politics so fascinating today is its bipolarity. We can’t help but live simultaneously in two worlds: one based on abundant fossil fuels, the pursuit of economic growth at almost all costs, rampant consumerism and grotesque inequality. And one based on elegant, very low-carbon, hyper-efficient lifestyles, in a fairer, less frenetic, genuinely sustainable world.
The longer we hang on to the first world, the harder it gets to make the transition to the second – and if we can’t make that transition, we’re stuffed. Persisting with the first world, means the death of everything we hold dear. Horribly soon.
A few people in the Labour Party – including at least six members of the Cabinet – get this. Most still don’t. Those who do are constantly trying to persuade their colleagues that we have to accelerate the speed of the transition. We can’t forever live in both worlds. Which means that every big decision taken that locks us deeper and deeper into first (old) world ways of creating wealth and notionally improving people’s lives is a profound betrayal of progressive, forward-looking politics.
So the decision for a third runway at Heathrow is not only massively flawed on both economic and environmental grounds. And not only stupid, as it will never happen anyway. It also marks the death of any residual aspiration on the part of (this particular expression of) the Labour Party to help guide us towards a better world.
Which leaves us all with a lot to reflect on.
The pits
Helen Clarkson, November 7th 2008, Transport
Lewis Hamilton’s victory last weekend saw the nation briefly lift its head out of financial gloom and celebrate something on the front covers of the newspapers for a change. And we were given a similar sporting lift a couple of months earlier with superb medal hauls by both the GB Olympics and Paralympics teams.
But what’s got me fuming is an advert that I saw in a tube station earlier this week for The Race of Champions, an event where superstars of Formula 1, rallying, touring cars and even motorbike racing come together to race cars round Wembley Stadium and find out who is the motorsport king.
Hang on a minute – cars at Wembley? How are they going to do that? So I checked out the website, where they trumpet: “[Track construction] calls for approximately 1,800 tonnes of asphalt, 2,200 tonnes of underlay and the erection of a 100-tonne cross-over bridge. It takes a team of 50 people five days to build and three days to dismantle”. They don’t mention what happens to the tarmac, the underlay or the bridge afterwards and despite scouring the website I couldn’t find anyone to write to, to find out.
In other news this week, the Scottish parliament overturned Aberdeenshire Council’s refusal of planning permission for Donald Trump’s golf course, allowing the “world’s greatest golf course” to be built over the Foveran links, a legally protected set of sand dunes. The parliament’s inspectors ruled that the economic benefits outweighed the environmental damage.
Sports will be part of a sustainable future – great for social capital, good for health, good for the economy. But some sports seem to be sitting outside of the sustainability debate and carrying on with business as usual, and surely that’s got to change.
Carbon emissions are one of the most obvious problems for Formula 1. In 2006 F1 made a big noise about “going green” and taking carbon emissions seriously. At the recent Japanese Grand Prix green striping was included on the tyres to represent this effort, most of which is directed at the cars themselves - currently undergoing what might best be called a ‘lite-green’ overhaul. By 2011 the sport will reduce the cars' horsepower, introduce some biofuels, and improve efficiency in their braking systems.
At the moment, however, the stripes are supposed to remind viewers to drive more efficiently, and to visit Make Cars Green. The website includes 10 handy hints to improve your fuel consumption, including not warming your engine before starting off, accelerating gently and keeping your speed constant – not rules that Lewis Hamilton would be familiar with (though I expect he finds it easier to abide by the proscription against roof-racks).
But the race in itself seems to be only a fraction of the sport’s crimes against sustainability. The multi-billion dollar Formula 1 circus takes in 18 events, of which half are in Europe and the rest around the world from Brazil to Malaysia. The teams travel at least 100,000 miles per year between races and test sessions, further if they spread their testing around the globe. Each team packs at least three cars, with attendant spare parts for each race (and 3,000 bottles of mineral water, apparently, though it’s not clear why): a grand total of 32 tonnes of equipment and 80 personnel per team. The logistics of moving Formula 1 around the world are likened on its website to “being similar to that needed for a medium-sized military campaign”. With most of this done by air, the ‘Make Cars Green’ campaign looks laughable.
This is in sharp contrast to the plans for the London Olympics in 2012 which aspire to be the first ‘sustainable’ games, setting new standards for sporting events. There are commitments in five key areas: combating climate change; reducing waste; enhancing biodiversity; promoting inclusion; and encouraging healthy living. There’s consideration of the materials being used, with plans to build a recyclable stadium and send its seats for to the hosts of the 2016 Olympics for reuse. Whether or not this is achieved, or whether politics intervenes remains to be seen. But you can’t help admiring the scale of the London Olympics’ ambition for sustainable sport - it puts events like the Race of Champions to shame.
'If the NHS built cycle paths...'
Helen Clarkson, October 16th 2008, Public Sector, Transport
I feel good about cycling to work.
Yes, the road is full of crazed people (some of them pedestrians). Yes, it often rains. And yes, I have on occasion forgotten to pack my shoes. But being outside and getting exercise without having to join a gym keeps me reasonably sane.
Environmentally friendly, socially positive and easy on the wallet – cycling is an incredibly sustainable form of transport. It’s also good for the public purse. According to a report commissioned by Cycling England, each regular cyclist – someone who uses a bike more than three times a week – should save the NHS £28.30 a year.
New cycle paths, then, must be a brilliant investment. But there’s the rub. Yes, they’d save money for the local NHS Primary Care Trust – but the responsibility for building them lies with the local authority. If sustainable thinking is holistic systems thinking, how can it be achieved by public sector bodies that control only parts of the system?
Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) go a long way to joining the dots. They bring together local public, private and voluntary sector organisations in order to develop Local Area Agreements (LAAs) – co-ordinated initiatives that enable these sectors to work together more effectively. They are forums for the future in their own way, and naturally our Public Sector Programme wants to help them develop their ability to deliver sustainable solutions. We’re currently working on a project to bring together a group of LSPs both to co-create solutions in their own areas, and to share learning to develop best practice.
Look, for instance, at Leeds, where the city council – a Forum partner – is demonstrating the possibilities of such joined-up solutions. The Leeds Initiative is an LAA developed in partnership with the wider Leeds Strategic Plan. One of its innovative schemes has seen the council’s jobs and skills department working with the Leeds PCT to introduce regular exercise and fitness programmes for people currently on incapacity benefit, tackling debilitating problems such as back pain and, in turn, helping them back into long-term employment.
The Leeds initiative has rightly been recognised by the government’s Beacon Scheme for excellence in local government. But such stories should not really be beacons; they should be the norm. In developing our work with LSPs, we want to find out what makes for leadership at the LSP level. What factors stop them being just another level of governance and a hindrance to progress? What ensures they instead act as a vehicle for real change in an area, transforming the lives of citizens? We’ll let you know how we get on. In the meantime, I’ll be doing my bit to save my local NHS trust that £28.30 – every little counts.
Helen Clarkson is deputy director of Forum’s Public Sector Programme
This article also appears in the current issue of Green Futures
Image (CC) Network Osaka
Putting my best foot forward with walkit.com Bristol
Susan Warren, October 1st 2008, Cities, Transport
Today I took on the BBC in a rush-hour race to their Bristol studios. I left Temple Meads Station on foot and arrived safe, sound and full of energy 15 minutes ahead of the BBC reporter, who travelled by bus.
Radio Bristol issued the challenge on the day we launched walkit.com in Bristol, as part of our Sustainable Bristol City Region programme. walkit.com is a great website which provides all the essential information for anyone considering a journey on foot within a 5km radius of the city centre. You simply put in the two points you want to travel between, which then generates a map and directions and also shows the health and environmental benefits of choosing to walk.
So my walkit.com map for my rush hour race showed me journey time (25mins) calories burnt (150) and CO2 emissions saved in comparison to taking the car, bus or taxi (average 0.5kg).
Needless to say BBC Radio Bristol were impressed, particularly by all the detail that walkit.com provides for each journey taken. The launch generated a great deal of interest, with Bristol City Council Leader Helen Holland lending her support to the importance of encouraging people to get out of their cars in such a walkable city.
We have high hopes for walkit.com in Bristol, and are aiming for up to 20,000 users and over 50,000 walking routes generated in the first year. Evidence from users of walkit.com in other cities identifies that 90% are encouraged to walk ahead of other transport modes, with over 75% encouraged to take extra physical exercise. So watch this space for updates on how walkit.com is working in Bristol.
Choosing to get out of your car for short journeys makes great sense. It’s free, is good for your general health and well-being, and also reduces your carbon footprint into the bargain. A resource like walkit.com is just what we need to support people to try a different way of travelling, both for work and leisure.
We are very grateful to Bristol Primary Care Trust, Bristol City Council and Triodos Bank for their support in the development and launch of this website.
Susan Warren heads up the Forum’s Sustainable Bristol City Region Programme
Car industry saves the world?
Rupert Fausset, September 26th 2008, Transport
Unlikely isn't it? But one of the most important pieces of environmental policy in the world is currently making its tortuous way through the European Parliamentary process, which if approved will result in new car CO2 emissions being reduced by nearly 40% by 2020.
That's dreamy stuff for climate campaigners, a real policy that would put us well on track for the drastic 80% cut we need by mid century; a refreshing change from the crazy disconnect apparent everywhere else, with airport and coal power expansion seriously discussed by adults even as the arctic ice disappears before our eyes.
But yes, MEPs are on the verge of approving proposals for new cars sold in the EU to emit an average of 130g/km by 2012, and 95g/km by 2020. By comparison the average new car sold now in the UK emits 165g/km. Improvements on this scale hold out the prospect of a sustainable future for the auto industry, rather than flagging in the face of oil and carbon constraints. But can the industry achieve these kinds of improvements, given they've only managed a 13% reduction in the last 10 years?
On the face of it 130g/km - or even 95g/km - should hardly be a challenge, given we have many models on the road right now that achieve 130g/km, and even a handful approaching 95g, while practical new plug-in hybrids from Toyota and GM which will go further still are already in pre-production testing.
But the car industry has never been about practicality - it's about image, power and glamour, and the biggest profits have come from selling the biggest, thirstiest chunks of metal. The industry faces having to turn around its marketing messages if it is to sell as well as build more efficient cars. Little wonder therefore that it is the German auto industry with its luxury brands that has been at the forefront of industry efforts to water down the EU proposals.
Of course, there is a long tradition of reaction to environmental - and even safety - measures, with seat belts, airbags and catalytic converters all opposed in their day. But the industry should think hard before such a knee-jerk reaction this time.
The EU proposals are not only a major step towards climate stabilisation, they may represent salvation for the car industry as oil supplies decline. The recent oil price hike has hit vehicle sales worldwide, and getting away from the old bricks-on-wheels business model should be a priority for the EU industry. A legal framework which accelerates that process will leave them leaner as well as cleaner, and ready to supply the high efficiency vehicles which will leave us best off, in every sense, in the years ahead.
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