Focussing on CO2: good for bears, bad for humans?

As environmental concerns are growing, the EU and governments, including London's and the UK's are increasing their focus on limiting CO2 emissions. I've got two issues with this strategy:

1. Unless China and Blair's Gordon's best friends across the pond actually do something, our efforts are vain. And by extension, focussing on car emissions is equally short sighted as transportation overall account for 14% of all emissions (for instance housing is 10% and industries 16%, and I don't hear of a congestion charge on steel production or house building). This is because while cars can be taxed relatively easily (unless one is prepared to get a licence plate in Andorra), establishing a carbon tax on Chinese toys imports is a bit more problematic, both on the international trade laws aspects and on the difficulty to calculate it fairly.

2. Focussing only on CO2 car emissions favours diesel cars, which emitt much more particulates and other pollutants have got serious implications for human health, especially in inner cities. To this, one needs to add other greenhouse gas such as methane (cows fart!).

I will thus continue to fill my car with unleaded to protect babies.

Read also my comment on this post from Greenmonk: On Small Changes, Small Cars, Tax and Pollution

Tags: diesel, cars, environment, pollution, politics, UK, transportation, richmondtransits.blog