{"id":7269,"date":"2018-07-18T05:37:21","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T05:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7269"},"modified":"2018-07-18T05:37:21","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T05:37:21","slug":"diesel-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2018\/07\/18\/diesel-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Diesel death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irony indeed that the country almost ran out of CO2 the other week, just as the demand for gassy beer was rising. \u00a0If only there were a simple way of getting the stuff out of the air. \u00a0If only ...<\/p>\n

But this post is about the Faustian bargain that the Blair government struck with the heirs of Rudolf Diesel on our behalf \u2013 the details of which are now pellucidly clear.<\/p>\n

In 2001, Chancellor Brown, incentivised the use of diesel fuel as part of a CO2<\/sub> emission reduction campaign as diesel cars are more fuel-efficient than petrol ones and so generate less CO2. \u00a0 People (including me) got the message, with the result that the proportion of cars on UK roads using diesel almost trebled in ten years. \u00a0The Times reports\u00a0Lord Drayson, the science minister in 2008-10 saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did get it wrong. \u00a0We now have a much better understanding than we did just a few years ago of what are the health effects of the products of diesel cars, and they are literally killing people.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, The\u00a0Guardian<\/a> in 2015 reported a very senior civil servant, now retired, who asked not to be named, as saying that the\u00a0cost-benefit studies of a switch to diesel had been done, but climate change was \u201cthe new kid on the block\u201d and long-term projections of comparative technologies were not perfect. \u00a0\u201cI recall all the discussions had the health issue as a significant factor,\u201d he says. \u201cWe did not sleepwalk into this. \u00a0To be totally reductionist, you are talking about killing people today rather than saving lives tomorrow. Occasionally, we had to say we were living in a different political world and everyone had to swallow hard.\u201d [Note<\/strong><\/em> 1<\/strong>]<\/p>\n

\n

Indeed. \u00a0And the health threat from diesel exhaust had been known since the 1950s as burning diesel leads to about 20 times more sooty particulates than burning petrol. \u00a0And then there are the lies that German (and probably other) car companies have routinely told regulators and the public about the (in)efficiency of their engines.<\/p>\n

The Times report ended with this:<\/p>\n

\"These are difficult thoughts for governments that have legally bound themselves \u2014 none more so than the UK\u2019s \u2014 to making the \u201cfight against climate change\u201d the alpha and omega of environmental policy. But the result has been perverse, not just in adding vast costs to businesses and thus driving heavy industry overseas, not just in increasing the fuel bills of the British, but in actually putting the health of the public at greater risk.\"<\/p>\n

...........................<\/p>\n

Notes<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. This Guardian report<\/a> \u2013 All choked up: did Britain's dirty air make me dangerously ill?<\/em> \u2013 ought to be essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between health and environment policies \u2013 that is, all of us.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Irony indeed that the country almost ran out of CO2 the other week, just as the demand for gassy beer was rising. \u00a0If only there were a simple way of getting the stuff out of the air. \u00a0If only ......<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}