Describing some of the future challenges that will be faced by global manufacturers such as General Motors, Bob lamented the fact that auto racing – a sport with the potential to inspire significant innovation through competition – has become so tightly regulated in order to prevent teams from gaining significant advantages, that from a manufacturer’s perspective it provides little benefit beyond pure marketing.

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I wasn’t expecting to be impressed with the new Opel Ampera (the Chevy Volt’s European cousin). In fact, I was convinced I would find something dull, unimaginative and lacking in technical innovation.

But instead, I believe that I’ve actually found the only serious contender to replace the Audi A3 TDI that’s sitting on my driveway right now.

This week GM invited Gas 2.0 to witness the unveiling of the Opel Ampera, to go on sale in Europe in 2011.

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Describing Red Green and Blue as a web-site that “has the immediate appearance of hating people like me“, a Republican reader writes:

One look at it [Red Green and Blue] and it was clear that you suffer from the misconception that only liberals care about greenness therefore, we won’t mind your obvious political bias and childish slaps at people like me…

…..I’ve been a Republican since 1992 and can’t think of a single Republican I know that is anything less than concerned about this planet….

….Web sites like yours perpetuate the lie that Republicans have not been friendly to the environment.

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A straw poll of the many hundreds of responses seems to indicate that the majority of those outside of the US are unimpressed, with Palin’s lack of regard for the environment featuring in many remarks.

• >>More International Environmental Politics from Red Green and Blue

Read on for a selection of reader comments from the BBC.

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The Strauss family are about to find out as they undertake a Zero Waste Challenge during the first week of September, in an attempt to cut their household waste altogether. The idea first came about following concerns over the impact of plastic bags on marine life, said Rachelle Strauss in an interview with EcoWorldly;

“..In May of this year I read an article about the effects of plastic on marine life. When I showed this to my husband he was clearly shocked and moved by what was happening. From that moment he declared ‘no more plastic bags’ and here we are 4 months later carrying out the idea of reducing our waste to the ultimate.”

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I was reminded of this on a recent Sunday afternoon visit to the Portland Bill lighthouse on the South coast of England (pictured), since despite the brilliant sunshine one needed a concerted effort to walk headlong into the howling wind. Talking above the constant noise of wind and sea was almost impossible, and local people tell me this is by no means unusual here.

Yet despite being a desolate place with enough wind energy blowing through every day to provide a significant portion of local energy needs, you won’t find a single wind turbine at Portland today. Nor anywhere else along the windy Dorset coast for that matter.

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Energy companies have become flush with cash following high margins from record oil prices and a government sponsored carbon permit give-away used to justify a consumer price hike.

• >>More on Energy from Red Green and Blue

Despite campaigners and Labour politicians describing recent profits as “grotesque” and “indecent”, and calling for additional taxes on recent gains to subsidize increasing household energy costs, there are several reasons why energy windfall taxes are fundamentally wrong, with the potential to worsen, and not improve the current energy crisis:

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Following a freeze on engine development, Formula 1 teams are going hybrid from 2009 - additional power output can only be delivered by recovering kinetic energy under braking and releasing at again under acceleration. Whilst hybrid technology is widely proven in road cars, there are challenges in implementing a system that can fulfil the ultra competitive demands of Formula 1, with teams looking to build systems capable of delivering an additional 60 horsepower whilst weighing less than 35 kilograms.

Accidents

These challenges were aptly demonstrated recently after the Red Bull Formula 1 team factory was evacuated for 2 hours as fire crews dealt with a lithium battery explosion. Following this incident, a BMW team mechanic was hospitalised having received an electric shock from the body of a BMW hybrid Formula 1 car on its return to the pits following a test run.

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With the government taking most of the blame (38% of those polled placed the blame on Whitehall), it seems that few people acknowledge the fact that increasing consumption of a finite resource sold on a volatile world market is the real reason for high prices at the pump.

Of course, taxation makes up a significant percentage of the retail price of fuel, which is something that governments do have influence over. To this effect, Conservative party leader David Cameron has proposed a sliding scale for value added fuel tax which decreases as crude oil prices increase, shielding the consumer from global oil market shocks.

However, taxation is ultimately irrelevant to the long term future of oil prices, as prices will inevitably rise as demand in an increasingly affluent world continues to outstrip increase in supply. It is in this respect that Western governments need to face up to the necessity of implementing long term policies to reduce and eventually eliminate the world economy’s dependence on oil.

Solutions for the future?

Reducing, or indeed increasing fuel taxes won’t achieve this, and neither will drilling for more oil or encouraging people to dive fewer miles in more efficient cars.

The only real solution is the development of technology that can offer similar practicality to fossil fuels and provide this to billions of consumers at a low price (in many places a pint of oil still costs less than a pint of beer), and this technology will only be developed and become viable as oil prices increase, letting the market do its work by reducing the comparable cost and risk of new investments.

Perhaps, therefore, the best thing that governments can do in this case is to leave the issue alone – governments have a poor track record in successful market intervention, with many current drilling and tax reduction proposals likely to only prolong the pain and increase damage to the environment.

The British are right to blame their government, although maybe we should blame them for doing too much, rather than too little?

Other posts about oil prices:

• “McCain Credits Bush for Drop in Crude Oil Prices, White House Basically Replies: ‘Wasn’t us.’
• “Bush Administration Proposes ‘Fire Sale’ of Rocky Mtns. For Oil Shale Development”
• “New McCain TV Ad Blames Obama for High Gas Prices”

Photo Credit: j-cournelius via flickr Under a Creative Commons License

Man Blows up Garage Making Biodiesel

Those with a keen interest in DIY and alternative energy may do well to learn from the experience of a British man who was airlifted to hospital on Sunday after blowing up his garage whilst attempting to make bio-diesel.

The explosion left the unnamed man with burns to his face, arm and torso. He was subsequently rescued by fire crews using special breathing apparatus – a spokesperson for Oxfordshire County Fire & Rescue Service advised that people take “extreme caution” if attempting such projects at home.

See also: Learn How to Make Biodiesel on You Tube

With thanks to The Daily Telegraph.

With the postponement of the 2 pence per liter fuel duty rise, fuel duty in the UK today is 17% lower in real terms than it was under the previous conservative government, who made a series of above inflation increases as part of a policy to reduce congestion, pollution and green house gas emissions. Recent crude oil prices have offset the need for tax rises to achieve these goals.

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With a tank of fuel for the average family car costing close to $150, high fuel prices have effectively acted as one very large carbon tax - and effective they have been. Britons have reduced fuel consumption by 20% during the past year, driving less, and driving more slowly at the same time. Sales of fuel efficient vehicles are at an all time high.

But unfortunately this is not politically sustainable. The aforementioned protest is hurting the government’s popularity badly as disposable incomes are eroded by fuel bills. Having previously made broad promises to reduce Britain’s CO2 output by up to 80% by 2050 in a bid to profess world leadership on Climate Change, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been carefully avoiding any kind of statement on environmental targets during previous months. Meanwhile Britain is set to miss most of it’s legally binding and far less ambitious climate change objectives anyway.

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As new figures condemning China as the world’s biggest producer of CO2 were reported in the Western world last week, many observers shook their heads and pointed their fingers towards the East as an excuse to avoid personal responsibility for climate change, before moving on to the next news item on their Chinese manufactured computers and plasma tv screens.

China may be the dirty nation of the world today, but what went widely unreported is the fact that of all nations, and despite a reluctance to commit to too much during climate negotiations, China is taking the kind of direct action that Western democracies in all their self righteousness have so far failed to do.

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Protests in Europe have been widespread, as Europeans who already pay twice that of our US cousins for fuel begin to feel the financial consequences of consistent price increases.

Truck drivers in Spain and France have blockaded major roadways and paralysed traffic on major city arteries. Meanwhile in the UK, similar protests by truck drivers - who claim they are rapidly being forced out of business by high fuel prices - have taken place across the country.

Adding to the chaos, Shell tanker drivers chose the same weekend to strike over pay disputes, causing many petrol (gas) stations to run out of fuel. Government calls to avoid panic buying have predictably caused a peak-oil dress rehearsal, with long queues forming on many petrol station forecourts.

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“An armor-plated alien invader is eating its way through wildlife in Britain’s waterways”

So reads The Daily Telegraph this week. Who said that environmental journalism can be dull?

The invader in question is the American Signal Crayfish (pictured), described as a six inch long killing machine and voracious predator that has already annihilated the native White Claw species, and now threatens to completely overwhelm many fragile aquatic eco-systems.

The problems started during the 1970’s when Signal crayfish bread in farms for the restaurant trade managed to escape. So successful have they been, with their lack of natural predators, rapid breeding rate, and willingness to eat absolutely everything including plants, insects, fish, snails, detritus and their own young, that they have quickly grown into an aquatic army of almost plague proportions.

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Part of this week’s EcoWorldly cycling series: Cycling and its importance in countries around
the world.

A bicycle, I once read somewhere, is the most efficient form of human transport ever developed. Coupled with the fact that bicycles are relatively cheap and trouble free, and suffer few of the traffic problems that dog other forms of transport it’s no wonder that cycling has never been more popular.

But I’m starting to wonder if this popularity might start becoming a problem?

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And maybe hybrid technology is the key?

Today, twenty of the fastest cars on Earth will line up at the start of round 7 of the Formula 1 World Championship at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, to do battle for the biggest prize in world motor sport.

Capable of accelerating to 200 mph, and coming back to a complete standstill 12 seconds flat, a modern F1 car represents the pinnacle of automotive technology, precisely the reason that big name Japanese manufacturers Toyota and Honda have entered the sport as constructors in recent years.

Formula 1 has never been cheap - even the smallest teams have annual budgets in excess of $100 million to field two cars - but considering the resources available to the new Japanese teams, who are rumoured to have spent almost $2 billion between them on F1 in the past four years, one might expect a good chance of the Japanese national anthem being played when the constructors trophy is handed out this afternoon.

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Lauded as “one of the most professionally conducted and robust pieces of consumer research into the micro-generation market”, the principle reasons for Britain to make a big push for micro-generation outlined by the report are:

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