h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You drink pints at work ??!!

Here in Ireland, people just pop outside the pub to have their fag, then go back in to finish their pint.

Which makes the air for pedestrians worse.

This is true.

But not anywhere close to the level of air pollution caused by almost all drivers.
The EU trade bloc could have begun a phase out petrol cars and most pesticides and alot of other ills years ago.

And I'll stop my off-topic rant there.

And if they had then people would have complained about Brussles curtailing our rights with their silly laws. It's a lose-lose situation for them.

Oi, you're not allowed to be that objective when talking about Europe. Don't you read the papers?

What rights? This is Europe not the USA. Who thinks they have an inalienable right to drive a car that pollutes everyone's breathing air and is causing long term damage to the environment?
The EU could get rid of that stupid CAP that helps no-one but the French and use it to subsidise Organic farming or farming with less harmful perstisides and give everyone a grant to put towards a less polluting vehicle. The technology for affordable electric cars has been around for yeard now. And petrol fueled ones could be phased out over am entire decade.
Anyway the EU loves protectionism for European jobs and industry and it could use environmental concerns as an excuse to justify it's proetctionism. No importing GM, no importing from countries that haven't banned certain pesticides, no importing private cars fueled by petrol/diesal.

>>What rights? This is Europe not the USA. Who thinks they have an inalienable right to drive a car that pollutes everyone's breathing air and is causing long term damage to the environment?<<

Everyone over the age of 17.


>>The EU could get rid of that stupid CAP that helps no-one but the French and use it to subsidise Organic farming or farming with less harmful perstisides and give everyone a grant to put towards a less polluting vehicle.<<

The French feel that the EU has damaged their economy enough, and that's one of the reasons they voted no to the constitution. You don't get them back on side my crippling their economy.


>>The technology for affordable electric cars has been around for yeard now. And petrol fueled ones could be phased out over am entire decade.<<

The problem with electric cars as I see it is that they'd need electricity. Electricity doesn't grow on trees and needs to be produced at power plants. So new plants would need to be built, and you can bet that most of those would be fossil fuel plants. And since electricity would be lost in the power cables, and it would "bleed" from the battery, it would be less efficient as well.


>>Anyway the EU loves protectionism for European jobs and industry and it could use environmental concerns as an excuse to justify it's proetctionism. No importing GM, no importing from countries that haven't banned certain pesticides, no importing private cars fueled by petrol/diesal.<<

That's the way of the world. It would be nice to think that we can all give up our fueds and work for the betterment of humanity as a whole, but that's not going to happen, at least not in our life-times.

People may think they have inalienable rights, but they haven't. Society has a higher claim than any individual.

"The French feel that the EU has damaged their economy enough, and that's one of the reasons they voted no to the constitution. You don't get them back on side my crippling their economy"

They may feel that. But that doesn't make it the reality.

Providing incentives for farmers, French or not, to go organic to get their hands on the billions of Euros in subsidies or to diversify doesn't amount to the crippling of an economy, it makes it a more dynamic economy.

"The problem with electric cars as I see it is that they'd need electricity. Electricity doesn't grow on trees and needs to be produced at power plants. So new plants would need to be built, and you can bet that most of those would be fossil fuel plants. And since electricity would be lost in the power cables, and it would "bleed" from the battery, it would be less efficient as well."

Electricity 'grows' on wind farms and *almost* magically appears through atomic fision.
Regardless of your *opinion* on the relative effiency of electric cars, petrol and gas definately don't grow on trees and one has to hope that goverments will realise they can't afford to rely on piped in gas from Russian to fuel powerstations for both reasons of security of supply and getting anywhere close to the targets on reduced carbon emisions.

"That's the way of the world. It would be nice to think that we can all give up our fueds and work for the betterment of humanity as a whole, but that's not going to happen, at least not in our life-times."

The barrier to what I suggest isn't the petty feuds of nations, but the petty desires of the nations individuals, and therefore the petty concerns of a goverment getting re-elected.
And the goal of what I'd like to see isn't the betterment of humanity, it is survival.

>>Electricity 'grows' on wind farms and *almost* magically appears through atomic fision.
Regardless of your *opinion* on the relative effiency of electric cars, petrol and gas definately don't grow on trees and one has to hope that goverments will realise they can't afford to rely on piped in gas from Russian to fuel powerstations for both reasons of security of supply and getting anywhere close to the targets on reduced carbon emisions.<<

But they're not going to build wind-farms, partly because they take up a lot more room than coal plants and produce less energy. What's more, people actually complain when wind-farms are built because they ruin the "natural beauty" of the countryside. And nuclear stations are just as bad as the most poluting coal plant in the world. They not only have the possibility of a meltdown, but they produce large amounts of nuclear waste.


>>The barrier to what I suggest isn't the petty feuds of nations, but the petty desires of the nations individuals, and therefore the petty concerns of a goverment getting re-elected.
And the goal of what I'd like to see isn't the betterment of humanity, it is survival.<<

There's a joke which says that the IQ of a mob of people is equal to the IQ of the most intelligent person in the mob divided by the amount of people in the mob. The same I think can be said for society as a whole. While individual people, like you and I, can be quite intelligent, people as a collective aren't.

China is going to build alot of coal powered stations. Which is a shame because they have been quite innovative in there designs for nuclear power plants... It is from these designs that new plants should be built in the UK and Europe, they are safer and cleaner than those that blew-up 20 years ago. Technology and understanding has improved since then. the cost of getting rid of nuclear waste is nothing to the cost of sea level rises and climate change. Goverments are gonna have to look to the long-term if they want to enjoy their index linked pensions.

Still going back to the EU and the CAP, something has needed to be done for a long time about that, and it hasn't... So yes, what hope is there of the UK goverment building the number of nuclear power plants needed to meet our energy guzzling "needs" and reduce carbon emissions...? Not good.