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Just a drop in the ocean
Page 9
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Perhaps the environment is too big an issue to resolve over a pint at the Mermaid Tavern but it seemed all my colleagues in the road haulage sector had an opinion on the subject.
But what upset Hampstead most was the inevitable spin it was delivered with. "This will be the equivalent of taking one million cars off the road," said Alistair Darling. Well, not quite.
Hampstead felt Tony seemed more concerned about what goes on in the atmosphere than on the ground. Politicians flew everywhere, he moaned or used the Heathrow bus lane in their limos.
Mush was convinced that successive governments had used a carrot-and-stick approach to reducing emissions. And, unfortunately, for haulage, it was the same carrot every time: increasing maximum vehicle weights. We finally got 44 tonnes, and now there are murmurings of 60 tonnes. But this is a carrot for the end user, not the haulier.
In the container sector, where Mush works, the customers quickly claimed the benefit of any payload gains. Gone were those heady days of the triaxle surcharge.
True, the stick, in the shape of Euro-1, -2, and -3 engines, had reduced emissionsbut increased fuel consumption too. So government policy seemed to be onwards and backwards.
Everyone agreed it was necessary to reduce emissions but, as Pork Chop pointed out, our efforts were a drop in the ocean. Even if the UK achieved zero emissions in all domestic areas, 8% growth in air travel and 5% growth in sea freight each year would still mean we were producing more emissions globally, not less.