Reality Check: What should owners of old diesels do?
I live in a sparsely populated rural area and bought a diesel car in good faith. Now a one size fits all policy looks to discriminate against me and hundreds of thousands more people in the future. I don’t have access to public transport (most of which is based on diesel polluting buses). I notice diesel is now on average 10-12p a litre more than petrol – is this a cynical cashing in on the national mood music which retrospectively seeks to demonise diesel drivers? This story puts more metaphorical fuel on the fire. It tells us:
The government’s clean air strategy, which was published on Monday, describes reducing pollution from nitrogen oxides (NOx) as its most immediate challenge.
NOx emissions come mainly from diesel vehicles. Much of the strategy on road transport had been announced previously, including the pledge from July to stop all sales of new conventional petrol or diesel powered cars and vans by 2040.
But it devolves responsibility for reducing NOx emissions mainly to a local level….
I assume this means some process of beating local government for a failure to deliver on a poorly thought through national policy stance. Some things never change!!!