The environment?

[Millsy]

Ok, so here's something I've been thinking about. Gradually the cost of running cars is going up. For us who drive Supras we're paying a decent amount in tax and our cars love to drink more expensive high octane petrol. Then we modify them and they drink even more.

 

Thinking unselfishly too, many people remove their catallytic converters which increases the emissions and maybe only put the cat back in at MOT time. Maybe I've read too many newspaper reports or something, but it seems that our time with these cars in the way we enjoy them now will be a thing of the past in a matter of years as the government try to force petrol cars off the road.

 

Every major manufacturer is now looking at greener alternatives to petrol, so what will happen to cars like Supras when V-max becomes as rare as leaded petrol is now? Or will that not ever happen? Also, thought a poll might be interesting to gauge people's thoughts on being green.

[flukey-lukey]

As long as people still buy v-power/optimax/v-max I doubt they will stop selling it, must be making a hell of a profit. Worry about issues like this when they happen

[Al Massey]

theres nothing wrong with the environment, its a load of bull so the governments can make more money,

[Millsy]

Fair point. Not really worrying while they are selling it. But, for example I was thinking about the people who make money out of tuning our cars. Tuning is going to get more difficult because of emissions etc so they'll all end up playing with more modern cars and getting more into things like flash tuning etc. That's probably not too far away. So cars like Skylines and Supras etc will have less people wanting to play with them professionally, the owners will probably be getting taxed ever more and the petrol will keep going up. I guess as car owners we can worry about these things when they happen, but I suppose I'm wondering what peoples opinions of how the future will shape up for Supra owners - like in the next 5 to 10 years.

[bmx1lew]

I believe it's all a money scam, the climate change was predicted 20year's ago by green peace, all we had to do was stop cutting down the Amazon, which was ignored, and now they blame car's, however places like china that have no pollution laws causes allot of problems, not to mention the yank's with there cheap fuel and massive v8's!, apart from that as we have lower octane fuel we produce more emmition's.

 

The government is preventing allot of alternative's from hitting the market, take hemp oil.. it can be refined so fine that you can run plane's, boats, car's and machinery off it and it only give's out H20 , now 1 acre of hemp produces the same oxygen level's as 4 acre's of tree's , tree's take 30 year to fully grow, hemp takes 90 days, if that was put to mass farming it could solve a few issues.

 

and why has it taken them so long to find alternative's I mean they can send people to space yet they cant make a normal engine run on a alternative fuel.. a pc could be built to run using only water.

[pete_TT]

My thinkin is that i do less miles then mr average car user, so am causing less polution anyway. And the experts are wrong.

[pete_TT]

Oh and cows cause more polution then cars anyway and they dont get taxed.

[snake]

The goverment get £10 billion more in taxes than it costs to offset the "carbon footprint"

so at present we are in the "green" its just another ploy to tax us to death.you pay tax on your wages ,tax on what you buy,tax on your pension,and when you die you pay tax when your kids sell your house.so i dont think i will worry to much.

 

ps is there vat on the coffin to pay?

[Millsy]

Ok, I get what we're all saying here. The government are money grabbing t@ssers who can't keep tabs on their spending so recoup it by hitting the easy targets like us. But, as far as cars causing environmental damage go - there must be some truth in it. The fact that car manufacturers and governments etc haven't found alternatives is that they too care more about keeping the far east happy and making money than they do about the environment. There's enough green impedus nowadays on everything to suggest there's truth in what gets said about co2 emissions from cars etc. So as individuals, do you ever think that keeping your car as environmentally friendly as possible or even downgrading to a more effecient car is the way forward? And even if you don't, how much would you be willing to pay to keep the use of your Supra. If road tax went upto £1000 a year?

[jaymdee]

 

ps is there vat on the coffin to pay?

 

who gives a sh*t if you're dead!!

[snake]

my kids might

[jaymdee]

Ok, I get what we're all saying here. The government are money grabbing t@ssers who can't keep tabs on their spending so recoup it by hitting the easy targets like us. But, as far as cars causing environmental damage go - there must be some truth in it. The fact that car manufacturers and governments etc haven't found alternatives is that they too care more about keeping the far east happy and making money than they do about the environment. There's enough green impedus nowadays on everything to suggest there's truth in what gets said about co2 emissions from cars etc. So as individuals, do you ever think that keeping your car as environmentally friendly as possible or even downgrading to a more effecient car is the way forward? And even if you don't, how much would you be willing to pay to keep the use of your Supra. If road tax went upto £1000 a year?

 

Yes and no. Petrol cars do put out CO2, but there are scientists who say CO2 is not the polluter everyone thinks it is. Volcanoes have been blasting shed loads into the air for billions of years. In america Diesel is considered a bigger polluter, so no one drives diesel cars.

 

The CO2 output from the UK is negligible, so the output from cars in the UK is so small, banning all cars in UK would do NOTHING for the world's environment (may help locally though).

 

Personally I think the fact that the BBC (and other news stations) all have 'environmental reporters' now is a heap of crap. They fly all over the world talking about the devestation from cars & plane's, yet they must rack up more miles than anyone else!!

[Al Massey]

the people in this country will stand up to our government soon enough,and then they wont have a lag to stand on, t

he only reason people are worried about carbon footprint and cars destroying the earth is that oil is getting harder to find and theres more things out there that need the oil just as much as cars,

so they put the emphassis on us car drivers to try and get us to stop driving them

[Branners]

While the goverment gives such big tax breaks to those who drive diesel company cars Im not going to worry about my supra being a polluter. Particulates from diesel engines are a serious problem but the Goverment only focus on CO2 so the cars that could be better for the environment overall arent developed.

 

Also the number of companies that do nothing for recycling is rediculous. The amount of waste paper that comes out of every company is huge and most electrical equipment is left on or on standby overnight along with the lights.

 

Any changes we make to our lifestyles will have minimal effect on the problem, taxing big business for wasting energy or for being a polluter would be a much better approach.

 

JB

[Scoboblio]

Personally I think that IF mankind is causing global warming, then it's a scientific problem - and there's a scientific solution to it out there somewhere.

[michael]

I'm sat in the garden with a cold beer in September, the sun is shining, the plants are still flowering because they thing it's summer... what's to worry about?

[bmx1lew]

The goverment get £10 billion more in taxes than it costs to offset the "carbon footprint"

so at present we are in the "green" its just another ploy to tax us to death.you pay tax on your wages ,tax on what you buy,tax on your pension,and when you die you pay tax when your kids sell your house.so i dont think i will worry to much.

 

ps is there vat on the coffin to pay?

 

 

if you think about it there's nothing you dont pay tax/ vat on,

 

life is one giant tax cycle if you think of it in the terms you work to get taxed and you are taxed, every thing you buy, then pay for food, a home also when you take a dump ( water rates to flush your chods away) every last thing.. if the goverment could tax you for breathing they would!

 

the only way to get out of it is to be a tramp/ begger or a jippo then just steal your cloths.

 

watch this video it's really interesting,

 

http://zeitgeistmovie.com/ its on for a while but it covers allot, it basicly show's you that we are just puppets, apart from that the first part is really good to, it basicly shoots down all religions

[merckx]

What they should be doing is building new cars that have smaller less powerful engines.

 

Cars that are on the road now will eventually disappear but with new cars they're just going totally in the opposite direction, executive cars like Mercedes, Audi's and BMW's with 400-600 bhp engines - madness!

[snake]

if something needs to be done then the whole world needs to be on board .A FEW countries in the world produce MOST of the pollutants and use the most oil until they are willing to do something about it ill keep driving the supra.

[bmx1lew]

the people in this country will stand up to our government soon enough,and then they wont have a lag to stand on, t

he only reason people are worried about carbon footprint and cars destroying the earth is that oil is getting harder to find and theres more things out there that need the oil just as much as cars,

so they put the emphassis on us car drivers to try and get us to stop driving them

 

this country will never make a stand the British are weak we are to scared to open our mouth's, if that was the case we would have all ready rebelled or formed a legion against plenty other thing's, one reason i like the french is because when the government makes a decision they don't like the whole country will go on strike so they come to a stand still, or the Australians's look at what they have turned around and said to all the immigrants! best thing to do is pack our bags and go to newzeland the shire looks nice there .

 

biggest issue in this country is the dole, the British have become lazy which causes issues as there's jobs to be filled, so when all these polish people come over here to work they take our jobs but the issue with them polish is that they send all there money to Poland for there families and as it is not been spent in the UK it is fucking up the economy!

[bmx1lew]

oh yeah and polar ice caps melting due to the world getting hotter is a natural cycle we are 8000 year's over due on a ice age, them melting was a time bomb waiting to go off

[Daston]

Yep I thought we were comming out of an ice age not going into one? I supose its swings and round abouts earth heats up ice caps melt golf stream goes tits up and hell freezes over, white snow reflects sun earth heats up again. Well Evo and scooby sales would go up.

[Ewen]

I'm a hypocrite I suppose. I care about the environment, re-cycle, dont waste water etc etc but I drive a Supra, use aeroplanes and design boats that do 6 gallons to the mile.

I also eat cows, which aparently helps.

[Al Massey]

this country wil make a stand, all it will take is something to trigger it.

i know i will,iv had enough of the fu**ers and do everything i can to p**s them off.

 

take the petrol crisis for an example, people thought we could go on strike and do blockades and think it would work. it wasnt thought out properly at all as it didnt affect the government.

we need to hit them where it hurts the most

[Tannhauser]

I'm a hypocrite I suppose. I care about the environment, re-cycle, dont waste water etc etc but I drive a Supra, use aeroplanes and design boats that do 6 gallons to the mile.

I also eat cows, which aparently helps.

 

I don't think that mkes you a hypocrite. Another way of looking at it is that: 1) you have an awareness of the things you do that have a big environmental impact and 2) you do what you can in other areas of your life to redress these.

 

It would be crazy to claim that cars don't negatively impact the environment, or that big power cars don't do more damage. having said that, it's entirely possible to drive even a single turbo Supra and have less impact than a Nissan-Micra-driving neighbour. You can more than make up the difference through, for example, fewer foreign holidays, or solar heating, or commuting fewer miles, or insuating the house, etc etc.

 

That's why the concept of a carbon footprint is a useful one -it gives you a more holistic (and realistic) way of assessing lifestyle.