Jeremy Clarkson has been a target for the left recently. They’ve attacked him relentlessly for not believing that the threat of global warming is not as serious or unsalvageable as the political left has been hoping. The following is my comment on just such a post: click here
It seems strange that people want to change our way of life without genuinely addressing the fact that solutions are available but not provided support by our government who, in all other circumstances, would be expected to assist change.
To make cars carbon neutral costs but a fraction of the amount Mr Brown takes as tax. If you want to address the other toxic effects of cars, I agree… But that should be done not by attacking progress (which is an inevitable result of the human condition) but by positively embracing it! Non-green fuels have been the way since man discovered coal and oil, technology offers the alternatives.
I don’t believe - I really don’t - that the fact that car-haters are the same people as those one may expect to be plugging government ownership and public transport, is a coincidence.
If the environment and public health is the concern, the enemy is not people making choices about their safety or work-travel-life balance - it is a government that is actively not making any efforts towards alternatives. California is the state making most inroads in the US and it is being far more successful than any EU country. BP, Shell, Haliburton, the US government, the North Sea speculators and etc. are big lobbyists - we mustn’t lose sight of that.
Let’s make economies of scale work on Prius-like cars and abandon the folly of plugging inflexible, slow and generally unpleasant buses.
I accept that Jeremy Clarkson is not a serious purveyor of political science, but he does represent a point of view that is underrepresented in the televisual media. The BBC’s placement of biased advocates of fossilised carbon-misuse highlights the problem: you don’t have to have a vested interest to have a contrary point of view!
January 9th, 2006 at 11:29 am
[…] The British TV motoring journalist and “Top Gear” host is apparently has some dangerous ideas that have landed him in hot water in the UK. He is accused of not believing in global warming and the Liberal-Democrats want to haul him before a parliamentary committee. See here, and here. “Are you or are you not a global warming skeptic?” […]
January 12th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
I suspect Mr Clarkson is a much more serious purveyor of political science than many of his self appointed enemies, including the woman with the pie.
I remember reading a book he had done where he put a throwaway line about the British people having twice recently voted for a leader visibly lacking integrity which seemed to me to show more perception & political maturity than most in politics.
January 12th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
Fair enough. I’m glad you share that opinion to be honest. Reading the responses I engendered on the original site you’d think I’d said John Prescott wasn’t a good politician or something crazy like that!
June 29th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Great article… and don’t forget the benefits that planting a tree will have on the environment. Each one will soak up 20kgs of CO2 every year and put enough Oxygen back in the atmosphere to support 2 people.