Europe diary: MEPs and motors (BBC) {We want big engines! Waah! Waah!}

[eppur_se_muova]

7 June 2007

BBC Europe editor Mark Mardell on the appeal of fast cars, the damage they do to the climate, and moves being debated in Europe to limit car emissions and put a health warning on car advertisements.
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The European Commission came up with its own idea for the laws in February and since then I've been trying to track what is happening to this proposed law, which will affect how we drive all over Europe.

The first really major step since then is upon us. Parliament is getting involved. The basis of this is a report which has just gone to the translators, who will doubtless have fun finding out the Maltese, Irish and Latvian for technical terms like "limit value curve". It will then be debated in a committee at the end of this month.

The MEPs will then have a chance to vote on further changes in September and the full parliament will debate it in October. I've had a sneak preview of the report that the debate will be based on. It's written by the Lib Dem MEP Chris Davies, who is what is known in the jargon as the "rapporteur" on the proposal.

He wants to ban cars that are capable of doing more than 101mph... that's 162km/h. (It's based on 25% more than the average upper speed limit.) Only military, emergency and police cars would be exempt from the law, which would come into force in four years' time.

Mr Davies notes that between 1994 and 2004 the power of new cars went up by 28%, making them a lot heavier, and so increasing the amount of CO2 they put out, even though no country raised its speed limit to allow cars to use this increased power.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/europe_diary/default.stm

Scroll down to the comments to see how truly unenlightened some people can be. Apparently the right to wretched excess trumps any considerations of possibly preventing a planetary meltdown. Defenders of big brute engines arm themselves with such 'facts' as this charmer: "The power of a car does not effect its weight, the two are entirely unconnected."