Originally Posted by TelBoy

That's a hell of an assertion. On what basis are you making it?

Originally Posted by TelBoy

Where do you get the 50-75% figure from?

Originally Posted by TelBoy

That's a hell of an assertion. On what basis are you making it?

Originally Posted by farmer1

I am making it on the basis that most of the targets are to reduce by a small percentage by 2010 2020 etc.

In order to have any real impact, cut backs in the order of 50-75 % are needed. The percentages the british government are planning to make, which will make are economy suffer greatly on a global scale is negligable.

Originally Posted by MadMark

Any reduction is good. Surely we all have to start somewhere?

Originally Posted by ozzy

If we settle on any little reduction it'll take feckin forever.

Originally Posted by unclebuck

"New Orleans may go down in history as the first major city in an advanced country to be lost to the process of global warming... We sincerely hope that the Bush administration will take the call from Hurricane Katrina and reconsider its energy and environmental policies and replace ostrich-like escapism with leadership in the global effort to deal with the crisis of global climatic change."

Taipei's Taiwan News

Originally Posted by farmer1

Is it heck, so you have a debt of £20,000 someone gives you £50 you can either a) go out and have a good night or b) reduce your debt by 0.0025%

There is no point in small changes.

Originally Posted by ALi-B

Thing is...people go about the yanks and their emissions...BUT

They were one of the first countries to fit catalytic converters to their cars...almost 25years BEFORE the UK and most of europe followed.

They were one of the first to use Unleaded fuel and stop selling Leaded fuel (again, decades before the UK ).

They had smog tests before the UK had emissions tests.

Obviously what this means, that since the seventies, american cars...as big gas guzzlers they were, ran on unleaded and had emssions equipment (such as catalytic converters, closed loop fueling systems, Exhaust Gas recycling etc) well before UK and Europe. One of the partial reasons for their low speedlimits was in the interest of reducing fuel consumption (brought on by the oil crisis).

I also believe the US was one the first countries to levy noise emissions regulations at certain airports (although that one is open to mass debate, as it belive it was state enforced law). (noise is pollution ).


Also California - one of the strictest states on pollution has their "Zero emissions program" (ZEV) for vehicles...where by it intention was to have 10% of cars within that state to procuse absolutley zero emssions....quite some feat. Ok, things didn't turn out as they planned....but what were UK and Europe doing about the same problem in 1990?....Non of the UK's cars had catalytic converters, Leaded fuel was still on sale, and most cars had inferior old tech emssions control systems (tamperp-proofed carb with an auto choke ).

So based on that I think we should give them a break...while we were sat on our ***** they were doing something...now we've hopped on teh bandwagon they are suddenly accused of doing nothing, when it couldn't be further from the truth. The refusal to sign the Kyoto aggrement is purely political in the interests of maintaining control on the US economy if such a situation arises.