Smiling because you don't drive a chelsea tractor?

Well, you may have to drive that smile off your face if you have cause to stray into the London congestion zone on occasion, as Ken's new £25 'gas-guzzler' charge is going to catch an awful lot of ordinary family cars out too.

This from BBC News reports that non 4x4's, but still categorised as members of the chelsea tractor club, such as the Peugeot 407 SW and several models of the Vauxhall Zafira range will also fall into the £25 bracket because their emissions exceed the 225g/km emissions limit.

As they say, if you don't catch enough fish, spread the net further.

Houses in order

I'm sorry, I can't let this - In denial - pass unremarked.

Actually a pretty decent article, and the comments in reply will be interesting (not that I can make any, as I seem to have been 'de-listed' as a verified respondent, which is frustrating).

But...

Look at the ad panel at the top. It's for Land Rover. Now I don't have as big an issue as some about 4x4s, but this is about a journey from 3 separate sources in Europe, and I very much doubt most will require four wheel drive.

So who is in denial? The public? Or the media or claim to be promoting good environmental practice whilst unable to resist making a buck or two in any way they can? I have sympathy for such as ourselves, currently subject to an automated system, but this is a major medium well able to decide it can no longer reconcile deeds that do not match words.

At least, if they wish to remain credible in my eyes.

ADDENDUM - I am now back in their good books. Apparently I got 'deleted' from the system because of bouncing emails. Sounds painful.

The delay was worth it, if only for a very interesting insight from a poster about the way the stats were interpreted. Well worth reading to see how what is published can get re-published in a different way entirely.

ADDENDUM 2 - Having been, possibly with reason, ignored for trying to raise the issue of media hypocrisy, I have decided to try a new tack to see if I can tweak a scientist to reply:

Some smart cookies here. So I'll ask a question I asked at the Venturefest in Harwell, with another bunch of very smart cookies (boffin and banker variety) all trying to figure out how to make money from climate change (there didn't seem much doubt it was happening, or that meddling with man's contribution was going to be BIG!).

What about deforestation?

A wee while ago I saw a small piece on Newsnight that had the loss of carbon sink from this as being in excess of the output of CO2 from the US.

Now it seems to me that, if we are worried about timescales and immediate enviROIs, sweating the trivia (plastic bags and 4x4s and even budget flights) pales into insignificance in importance to simply stopping the erosion of a mature, active and operational mitigation system.

Now I know the UK is but an acorn the great 'may contain nuts' collection of intolerances that make up our global Caesar's salad. But surely, with the power and influence of our City and high powered diplomats like Air Blair and David Miliband, we can devote some effort, with some degree of success, in tackling an immediate and real issue as a matter of priority? As opposed to, say, offsetting tomorrow's concert by paying for a fir being whacked in the firmament, hoping it doesn't croak and gets to do its job in a decade. Or trading some family's holiday allowance with a German construction company to help fund the subsidy for them to plant a wind farm that may not be quite as efficient, as often as the press release claims.

Ok, you can now all go back to squabbling over whether anything is happening or not.

Pains, Trains and Automobiles

Just grabbing the opportunity to get a few more blogworthy bit and bobs off my chest from my trip before further addressing the Guardian climate change summit review again.

Thanks to a few coincidences and some nice friends, my trip was a very efficient one.

Combining another trip, my wife had dropped my off in London, so I was on public transport all the way, commuting around whilst there, and making my way back home.

I must say, probably thanks to more than clement weather, all trips around London were more than pleasant, with delightful scenery to enjoy.

Speaking of which, look at what was parked outside the station. Now, as readers of this blog will know, I find the whole 4x4 issue simplistic, trivial and a distraction, but I have to say the serried ranks of the monsters in the heart of urban London was enough to shake one's head and wonder why. I am prepared to bet that these were not en route to pulling out a stump, negotiating a rutted track or even ferrying 7 kids to school.

As noted in my conference review, Mayor Ken had a few views on the subject, most of which involved dissing those who drive them as penis extensions. I have to say that he might be missing a trick with the voters a tad here, as almost all those driving them that I saw didn't look like a penis was involved in their physical makeup.

I also include something on the back of one such behemoth that tickled me. Not so much the 'my cause is better than your cause' aspect, but simply the way I read it, which was across and not in two columns. It conveyed a slightly different message.

Thing is, I don't know what can really be done to make this 'right'. These things are patently not 'necessary' for the function but, as noted more than often before, if one gets on that kick then we end up on a slippy slope with the 'what's necessary' police telling us how to live. If these things are 'wrong', they should not be allowed to exist (+VAT), and throwing legislative pressures at the consumer at the output end on a spurious basis (M5 at dead stop parked all day: charged. Hybrid buzzing about emitting all day: free. This deals with congestion, emissions, etc, how?)) seems disingenuous. And if our farming industries and support services (plus a few private souls in my neck of the woods, literally) are to be allowed that a vehicle of some sort is necessary, then for purely commercial reasons enough must be allowed to exist to make them viable. I'm not sure we'd fancy our troops rushing round Iraq in a Prius.

The other picture is the railway station, with a lonely poster that serves to show the sheer amount of money being wasted on pointless eco-ads instead of actual doing anything (and, of course advertising that in Junkk.com. We'll take the pointless eco-ad too, mind).

The final, and significant part of the story was my trip back. London to Gloucester for £9. Amazing. It costs almost that to get from Wandsworth Common to Paddington, and a third of that for the interminable bus trip from Gloucester to Ross. Scenic, but not repeatable any time soon. The other thing was it all gobbled up most of the day, which shoots your time management to pieces.

But as value it couldn't be beaten. My only real issue was, having arrived an hour early, I could not take the earlier, almost empty train to get back sooner, as this required a new, full fare ticket. That lack of flexibility is a real turn-off.

Death, Taxes, Bank Holiday Weather...

... and 4x4 protests.

All are inevitable.

Yesterday I picked up my - very bedraggled - sons from a Scouting camp.

It took a bit of doing. They were in a glorious piece of the country, and one reason it is like that is because it is a tad inaccessible.

Now, while it was a very uncomfortable and awkward hump to get all their personal stuff from the camp to the nearest point I could get my car, the mess tents, cooking stuff, etc were... are (still - we go back if we can gain access later this week) another matter.

It got me to wondering what will happen if 4x4s are rendered uneconomically viable or, as could happen, get banned. One could argue that this would return large tracts of the countryside to a kinder, gentler, motorised-free age.

Or... that farming would cease to be practical, and we'll simply entertain our kids by grabbing a plane to where the weather is nice(r).

I just think that before things get too hasty, and to symbolic, we should be careful what we wish for.

The rich are different to you and I. They can better afford to cope with (knee) jerks.

I suspect that I will be adding links from elsewhere to these, not to mention a whole raft of emotive comment, Just what the media loves.

Pressure group urges higher air taxes to penalise 'rich' flyers

Brown tackles 'Chelsea tractors' in final Budget

As with road pricing I simply fear potentially necessary measures to manage personal travel emissions will get snarled up by woeful knee jerk legalisation that has little to do with the environment and more to do with hype. Not all who fly or use 4x4s are rich or doing so simply for fun.

Let's see how the BBC mangle that one.

ps: The banner ads at time of writing were... ironic. One for short haul flights. And the other for a dirty great Beemer.

BBC - Budget 'to hit gas guzzlers hard'
Guardian - Budget to give tax breaks for green homes

Sir,

As a strong advocate of incentive based measures, this is, on the surface, hard to fault. I just worry about the practice. And how fair it can be made without more legions of civil servants draining the public purse simply to assess measure, approve and/or fine.

Not all are in a position to whack up a wind turbine to order. At least the payback is being claimed as on energy created and sent back tot he grid.

What I am not keen on is greenwashing measures, that may be acceptable if it leaves the financial ROI to the wallet and conscience of the consumer, but not if the ultimate enviROI is actually worse for not being done at all. That would not be helping my kids' futures.

The question then arises whose shorter term interests are being served.