I have a confession. We have a Land Rover Discovery. It has seven seats, two of which fold away in the back. Ideal for when the grandparents visit.Ideal for delivering my children’s friends home after a visit. We live in the middle of nowhere. Their friends live in the middle of nowhere.Widely dispersed.
In my wife’s last job she had to travel around the county down dirt tracks to Nowheresville. A Nissan Micra wasn’t an option.To cap it all, just after we moved to the area, we were hit by horrendous flooding that cut off the North half of the county from the Southern bit.
Now everything has changed. My wife’s job is more office based, we have not experienced any more monsoons, road tax has gone up and we’re pissing through diesel like its water. And then there’s the green issue.
What to do?
I get annoyed when I hear witterings about taxing ‘gas guzzling’ cars for two reasons. Firstly because we are not American and therefore do not use ‘gas’. If we have to resort to clichés can we at least use one of our own (and, being an abbreviation for gasoline, gas is not appropriate for oil burners anyway). Mainly however my annoyance is based on the fact that I am already paying tax on gas guzzling by guzzling gas.
So I get rid of the car. What do I do?
Do I sell it and buy something more economical and eco friendly? But isn’t whoever buys it going to drive it and therefore create the same environmental damage I would have?
Maybe I should scrap it? Even if I could afford to lose more than ten grand how many years of driving is it going to take to produce the same amount of CO2 that will be used to dispose of it and to produce the new I would replace it with? (I think I’ve established the fact that public transport is rubbish where I live).
Surely if the Government wants us to stop using such vehicles (and we’ll forget issues like personal freedom and consumer choice for a moment) the only way to do it is to prevent further vehicles entering the system. Penalise new sales. Create incentives not to buy them more. Anything else would be nothing more than passing our guilt onto the next person.

More taxes aren’t going to stop this cycle. The revenue raised doesn’t allieviate the situation. It pays for expensive mistakes like Iraq. I know it. You know it. They’re not fooling anyone.
 Maybe the Goverment could encourage us by starting a car exchange program. We give them our 4X4s, SUVs and executive saloons; they give us approved vehicles in return.
…Oh and they could give up their Jags and BMWs too. There’s only one of them and their driver. What’s wrong with using a Smart?
 
[1] Or the one further up the chain of cars that rolled off the production line to supply my replacement?