Leaping on the Bandwagon:
When politicians decide to get interested in a topic that is not inherently short-term, you know it's a problem.
Politicians, by nature, are a farsighted as the next election. However, climate change is such an emotive subject, it has even featured in the campaigns of the leaders of the main political parties.
A lot of it is hot air of course - we are talking about politicians. Take that self-styled environmentalist David Cameron's choice of car for instance... When offered a Toyota Prius (CO2 emission - 104g/km), he turned it down in favour of the Lexus GS 450H (CO2 - 186g/km).
His explanation: "My problem is that often when I go on tour, I have a lot of people in the car with me and I found on the tour when I used a Prius it meant we had to have two cars rather than one, so I don't think it would be very good for the environment."
Fair enough one might think.
However, according to the official Lexus website, it has a seating capacity of 5 and luggage capacity of 12.7; over to the main Toyota website, where we find the Prius with a seating capacity of 5 and a luggage capacity of 14.4.
Maybe the Lexus has a very large roof rack.
Anyway, back to the point. There have been a number of news articles over the last week, featuring the major players and lesser lights:
When politicians decide to get interested in a topic that is not inherently short-term, you know it's a problem.
Politicians, by nature, are a farsighted as the next election. However, climate change is such an emotive subject, it has even featured in the campaigns of the leaders of the main political parties.
A lot of it is hot air of course - we are talking about politicians. Take that self-styled environmentalist David Cameron's choice of car for instance... When offered a Toyota Prius (CO2 emission - 104g/km), he turned it down in favour of the Lexus GS 450H (CO2 - 186g/km).
His explanation: "My problem is that often when I go on tour, I have a lot of people in the car with me and I found on the tour when I used a Prius it meant we had to have two cars rather than one, so I don't think it would be very good for the environment."
Fair enough one might think.
However, according to the official Lexus website, it has a seating capacity of 5 and luggage capacity of 12.7; over to the main Toyota website, where we find the Prius with a seating capacity of 5 and a luggage capacity of 14.4.
Maybe the Lexus has a very large roof rack.
Anyway, back to the point. There have been a number of news articles over the last week, featuring the major players and lesser lights:
- David Cameron has been proposing that if he wins the next election he would like to install solar panels and a wind-power turbine on the roof of Number 10, Downing Street (found in the Metro, a free London Underground paper).
- Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, commissioned a report (the Stern Review) that predicts irreversible economic damage unless the world acts now.
- David Miliband, the UK Environment secretary, has proposed a package of green taxes to combat climate change.
- Colin Challen (Labour MP for Morley and Rothwell, Leeds, UK) has launched a bid to force car makers to display more information on carbon emissions in their adverts.
- Tony Blair, who clearly felt left out, said the Stern Review showed the scientific evidence of global warming was "overwhelming" and its consequences "disastrous".
posted by Duncan Keeling at
12:15
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