Sign of the times, but car companies are dragging their heels over electric vehicles
I grew up on a diet of TV shows like Knight Rider and The A Team. I saw Ferrari and Mclaren produce faster cars as time went by. I admired how the car industry kept on trying to improve.
But it seems like some carmakers have lost the fun of innovation.
German environment minister Peter Altmaier is keen to keep gas guzzlers on the road
It was 6.30am in Luxembourg and we were all keen to start. We got into our vans ready to launch our final action for cleaner cars in Europe. But this morning it was different. Instead of a handful of national activists calling on a car company to clean up its act, we went big.
There were thirty of us from across Europe who came together for the whole day to unveil a banner, placards and hand out flyers telling European governments to stand up to the bullying of Germany and its environment minister Peter Altmaier.
Politicians would make terrible magicians. That’s my conclusion after reading a new proposal that sets out how Europe should meet its fuel economy targets for all new cars.
The German government’s proposal is an attempt to con the rest of Europe into playing into the hands of car companies like BMW and Daimler.
Greenpeace activists display a banner reading "CO2 Das Problem" at the VW factory in Wolfsburg, Germany
Don’t you just hate it when someone has the power to make a real difference, but won’t use it? Take Volkswagen for instance. It’s Europe’s biggest car maker, eager to display itself as a friend of the environment and known worldwide for its high standards of engineering.
Yet for years VW has failed to put its money where its mouth is and commercially produce cars that are both cheap to run and emit far less CO2 than the rest of the market.
For
almost a year now, you’ve been asking VW to turn away from the dark side and
reduce its fleet’s CO2 emissions. Today we took that message to the company’s
AGM in Hamburg with a giant banner reading "Take responsibility
seriously! Honest climate protection now" (in German, obviously).
HS2 is great in principle, but the plan has plenty of holes
Last
week, the government gave the thumbs-up to the first phase of the new
high-speed rail network (aka HS2). Since then, debate between those for and
against has filled the media including a piece in the Mail claiming Greenpeace is opposed to the project. We're not of course, but it does need correcting.
Posted by jamie — 2 December 2011 at 4:22pm
-
Comments
The
phalanx of stormtroopers we sent to the hush-hush car lobby meeting today
have certainly had an effect. Even though it seems we were expected, their
presence created a disturbance in the Force for the car industry bosses who had
to walk past them, although for some it was all too much.