Environment must gain from car bailouts

This week two key factors emerged in relation to our car industry.

Firstly the EU have passed new targets that will reduce CO2 emissions by 20% in 2020 including new targets for vehicle emissions. Secondly it appears at least one UK maker will be cap in hand to the Treasury looking for a bail out to keep in in business over the coming months.

Now let me make it clear I without hesitation support the need for a financial package to the industry. Without it the same decimation of communities that followed the Tory butchery of the coal mines in the 80's will be seen in communities across the land as not just the big factories close but so do all their component suppliers.

However this must not be a blank cheque. If the government are in effect to take a large share in the car industry then it must do so with two reforms tied to the back of its money.

First the industry management processes must be streamlined and modernised. Then second the money must be tied to short, medium and long term commitments to improving the environmental friendliness of their product.

This can be simplistically be done in many ways however I suggest 4 key commitments to start the process off

1 Remove the most polluting variants from their range within six months
2 Place environmental friendliness on a par with safety in all advertising
3 Refocus new research on technology that improves fuel efficiency especially in the stationary traffic jam scenario
4 Commit to the original more ambitious targets that the EU originally proposed for this weeks legislation before the industry lobbyists got their claws in

That way not only will we have a car industry left after this crisis passes but we will have one configured towards ensuring our children have an environment left in which to own their own car in the future

The power decision

Well there it is, the die is cast the decision made and in the public domain all that is left is securing the funding and Wales will have two more power stations.


No don't get me wrong I don't mean nuclear stations I mean the plans of Mr Tomlinson of Holt and Mr Pugh of Churchstoke to turn their large supplies of cow dung into electricity. Neither scheme is very big in itself Mr Tomlinson only expecting to generate enough power to supply the 500 houses in the village from an initial setup cost of £1.2m. But think of the potential.

2002 figures point to there being about 2.5m dairy cattle in the UK based on Mr Tomlinson figures that seem to be backed up by work in the US this suggest that there is a potential for up to 250,000 houses to receive their power from this source equivalent to the domestic needs of Cardiff and Swansea combined.

Of course these are not the big single site schemes so loved by our government but as the Nepalesse experience suggest they have a significant role to play in tacking our emissions challenge.

Water Water everywhere

Well I'm not flooded out the Wye is about 20m below me in elevation but I should have been staying in Upton-on-Severn on Wednesday evening. However this gives cause to reflect on the implications of government planning policy.

Tewkesbury was where my grandmother spent her final years and I can recall several visits where the fields around town were flooded when I visited her in the late 1980s. Yet many of those same fields are the flooded estates of today.

Certainly the Environment minister may hide behind the exceptional nature of the event of the past few days but surely the name flood plain gives him a clue. As we take stock and as our new PM thinks about how we meet the challenges of climate change may I offer him a simple thought.


We have concentrated too much into too small a part of our country.

Of course such observations are not overly welcome but in a modern high tech UK now is the time not to spend massive amounts on building flood defenses for new houses known to be at risk of flooding. Instead we should be decentralizing our economy and ensuring appropriate growth and job opportunities are available in our more remote areas.

Of course a new estates of 20 houses in every Powys village being build year on year however small they are may not meet with overwhelming approval from some. But the costs to the UK of supporting our current flood prone landscape isn't something that appeals to me either