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

Joseph Proll is pledging to bring in some green policies.
Well, what's been going on since the land with the ski-white anti-freeze in the wine image signed the Kyoto Protocol?
A huge increase in greenhouse emissions! Now 36% over the Kyoto target.
It's not long since we had to suffer the idiotic 160km/h experimental speed limit on the roads of Carinthia. That's a cutting emissions idea? Don't think so.
And yet we're still driving around in our favoured diesel cars without particle filters like idiots with all headlights compulsory blazing, or pay €60 fine, in glorious summer sunshine using 10% more fuel and consequently 10% more emissions to do so.
It was so relaxing to be in France recently where one wasn't dazzled by oncoming vehicle headlights ad nauseum.

Ah -- you're in Austria?

10% more fuel to run headlights? I never dreamt it could be so much!

No way. Headlights: 500W consumption on full beam, tops. A powerful car like mine will be outputting 50Kw while cruising. Do the maths.

"a powerful car like mine"

I thought you monks walked around in sackcloth and sandals, or at most went on a donkey.

What's this "powerful car" business all about?

Never mind -- where d'you get the 10%? Or do you withdraw it?

Hi Rec, I got the 10% out of the local boulevard blatt, but I'll quickly withdraw it since despite it's promise "if it's in the xxxxxxx paper it must be true" it has proved on more than one occassion to be a tad wide of the mark. The words 'politically' and 'motivated' spring to mind.

Gracious of you! Thanks. I would like to know a credible figure; in my innocence I used to assume that the alternator ran all the time, whether the battery was low or not, and that therefore the lights took no extra fuel. I've been disabused of that one.

Found this from The Scotsman

"The AA Motoring Trust pointed to research from the Federal Highway Research Institute in Germany, which showed dipped headlights increased fuel consumption by 3 per cent, as extra power has to be generated."

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:YJlfMd4UARsJ:thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm%3Fid%3D343052006

I suppose it must depend on where you're driving, local traffic conditions and so on. Running 6 light bulbs on 2,000,000 cars during daylight hours in a small land with good summer sunshine like Austria is one small example of the kind of environmental thinking I can't get my head round.
They are going to be well over 30% of Kyoto in 2010, since now it's greenhouse gas standing at 18% over target and going rapidly up. We're only a small country so it doesn't really matter, has been the attitude up to now.

In addition what about the potential damage to children's eyesight. Many children's eyes are probably at the level of car headlights. The dazzling halogen bulbs featured on cars such as Audi are bad enough to observe in the rear view mirror.

"I thought you monks walked around in sackcloth and sandals, or at most went on a donkey.

What's this "powerful car" business all about? "

We try to. However, we men with the dirty habits also have country-friendly pastimes such as beekeeping, so I bought a secondhand turbocharged 4x4 estate car to allow me to negotiate muddy farm tracks. The 'sackcloth and ashes' aspect to its ownership is provided entirely by the badge. It's a (cough) Skoda.

Let's put some blues, reds and pinks in the Irish government as well

The blues (Progressive Democrats) pinks (Labour) and reds (independent Socialists) have been doing badly in Irish politics. The supreme talent of Fianna Fáil (the major party) is that it is all things to all people. Bertie claimed famously to be a socialist; but big business (particularly building) thrives under FF.

It is a very strange thing (did I mention this before?) but I don't actually know anyone who has said to me that they vote Fianna Fáil. I am a denizen of many minorities.

My Dad was a successful businessman, and he supported Fianna Fáil in the sixties, under Lemass. Lemass as taoiseach made the decision to end Ireland's isolationism and welcome in foreign investment. Thirty years later (despite gross mismanagement by Lemass's FF heirs in the meantime) (not least his son-in-law Charlie Haughey) this policy delivered the famous Celtic Tiger.

My father stopped supporting FF when they introduced a club called Taca, a group of business supporters of Fianna Fáil. He thought it an unseemly development and wouldn't join. Pretty soon he found himself a non-person in Fianna Fáil circles, and his allegiance switched to Labour.

"It's 'cough' a Skoda"

There's nowt wrong with a Skoda mate. It's the car of choice, after the Merc, for Austrian taxi drivers!

You should try visiting Swansea. EVERY single taxi is a white Skoda (I kid you not).

I drive a Toyota Yaris Verso (when I'm not on my bike). I'm very very proud of it: it takes a consort of viols and does 52 mpg.

When I'm not on the tram or my bike I drive a Renault Scenic 1.4, very economical and also practical.

And it's white!

Mine's not that economical. Ironically, it's green. And so is every other sodding example of that model I've seen.

Apart from the ones around here driven by Her Majesty's Finest...