The European Parliament has today voted in favour of a CO2 limit of 125g/km for all new cars built in Europe. The good news is that MEPs have recommended the deadline for this target be extended by three years, until 2015.
British MEP, Chris Davies, told the motor-industry magazine, Automotive News, that the target was a realistic one for manufacturers to achieve. In an interview with the magazine, he stated: “There are some people who want the industry to be punished but I don’t think the EU is in the business of punishing companies and that is not a sensible starting point,“ he said, adding: “The targets we have set are not unambitious and I think we have given industry a bit more time to achieve them at an economical cost.“
Mr Davies and his MEP colleagues have offered no advice as to how these targets might be achieved, although there is some talk of ‘supplementary measures’ involving fuel and tyre suppliers. It’s simple enough, Mr Davies, all we need do is re-invent the Otto cycle, so that instead of the familiar ‘suck. squeeze, bang, blow’, engines will go ‘suck. squeeze, bang, suck’, and draw back into themselves, and thus consume, the very emissions about which there is so much fuss.
It would be a novel form of perpetual motion and surely not beyond the wit of mankind: we have after all invented phone-in TV quiz programmes: a device for consuming vast sums of money in order to fund phone-in TV quiz programmes that consume vast sums of money in order to fund….
