July 3rd, 2019
Hello!
Sorry but this is going to be a relatively short blog post today – I’m standing up at the computer which is perched on a window sill, no chair of the right height yet sorted in our new house! We moved in yesterday…
Anyway, my subject this time is CARS, a topic I’m very ignorant about.
I learnt to drive when I was 25, having put off the inevitable for as long as possible, being anti machines & pollution in my idealistic young days in the 1970s.
It’s all coming back to bite us now, isn’t it?….
Of course it is so useful that I can drive now, but I must admit my interest in cars has been limited to their colour usually.
I forced myself to watch Top Gear this week, however!
The episode was about electric cars.
The ‘norm’ of the future, I hope…
When we were in Norway last month, we noticed that the ‘officials’ working on the harbourside all drove electric cars, lined up being re-charged while they had their breaks.
I’ve just discovered that the sale of electric cars in Norway is around 50% of all new cars, a figure way ahead of other countries around the world.
The Norwegian government is committed to the target that all new cars sold should produce zero-emission by 2025. There are tax breaks and incentives such as free parking available for owners of pure electric cars.
So, another lesson for the UK government…
At least Theresa May ‘urged countries to raise climate ambitions’ last week at the G20, but too little too late of course, words being cheap etc.
Well, today I’ve emailed a number of CEOs of car manufacturers asking about the prospect of them doing more advertising in order to make their electric cars sell better.
Why can’t ‘saving the planet’ become an attractive selling point….?!
Of course questions of range and availability of charging points is an issue for ‘customers’.
I was pleased to see an electric car charging point installed recently round the corner from our grandson’s family’s house – but it’s conspicuously alone. I hope it gets used.
Having looked online, there does at least seem to be some encouraging work going on in the Department for Transport to provide an expanded network of charging points – good news!
And other good news is the green/climate emphasis at Glastonbury Festival 2019, together with an encouraging ‘plan of action’ after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg joined forces.
And Extinction Rebellion have published a ‘handbook’, encouraging activism to save the world for all of us. It’s called ’This is not a Drill’ – bringing back more memories of my younger days, planning our activism against nuclear weapons, at Greenham Common for instance.
Stephen Poliakoff’s recent television drama, ‘Summer of Rockets’, featured the Doomsday Clock ticking towards nuclear war.
It felt to me as if he was referring to the ticking time-bomb of climate change too.
The world seems to have grown more aware of the importance of de-escalating a nuclear arms race (though of course nuclear power is still very evident, providing ‘clean’ energy, paradoxically….).
Surely the world can now agree on the importance of halting climate change.
Grandmother's questions 