My left wing geography teacher drove a VW Beetle. It seemed to be the law that every VW camper van had to display a a bright yellow sun (not the paper obviously) sticker emblazoned with 'Nuclear Power No Thanks' in the rear window. Even now the Islington (and Brighton) elite makes its way to Glastonbury in their tastefully restored brightly coloured VW
But this week we learned those diesel VW cars and vans have been emitting poisonous fumes responsible for 100's of 1,000's of premature deaths from respiratory diseases. Vorchsprung durch technik has killed many more people than nuclear power.
We now know that VW - and most likely other European motor manufacturers - have been conning us. It was not just a case of fiddling the emission tests. Software designers were actually commissioned to create a special sensor to install in the engine which identifies when a test was being conducted. The software fix would then cause the engine to switch to test mode which reduced the emissions. This was necessary because if the engine were to run in clean mode all the time its performance was basically crap.
And once again it took the evil petrol guzzling, gas fracking USA to discover this. Contrary to the impression you would gain from the general anti-American tone in environmental circles, American emission standards are higher than in Europe. VW cooked up this scheme to fool the US regulators. There was no need to do it here because the EU Commission had already been persuaded by the much 'nicer 'European car companies to keep their standards low - ironically partly to meet carbon emission targets. Bizarrely many in Europe - including our own UK Government - had concluded that switching from petrol to diesel would help tackle climate change.
So next time you hear dire warnings from the anti-TTIP crowd just remember that if we are forced to abide by American emission testing standards for our cars, we might just end with cleaner air and fewer deaths.
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