Filed under: MPG, Legislation and Policy, Green Daily, Europe/EU
Flintstones arrested at EU protest over CO2 regulations
Greenpeace
Everybody's favorite pre-historic family was arrested today in Brussels, Belgium. A group of protesters from Greenpeace dressed in Flintstones-style garb were taken into custody today as they approached the European Parliament building. The EU parliament is about to start debating the legislation that would impose carbon dioxide emissions limits on automakers. The European Commission had recommended rules with hefty fines for non-compliance and fleet average emissions limited to 130g/km by 2012. Under pressure from ACEA, the European automakers association, the parliament has moved to reduce the fines and stretch out the time-line for implementation. German automakers in particular are most opposed to the new rules and German legislators have vowed to protect their domestic industry. The Greenpeace protesters were opposed to the amount of influence the industry has had on the new regulations.
[Source: Reuters]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
rtshinn 3:42PM (5/27/2008)
What a bunch of Rubble Rousers.
Sorry, couldn't help it..
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Karl-Uwe Strunzen 4:23PM (5/27/2008)
I'm not sure if it really matters if the EU proposal goes through or not. Sure, the big fines being drawn up could really help up clean up Europe's cities. But even without it things are improving dramatically anyway. In all European countries (except Germany) there are incentives to buy cars with lower CO2 and in some there are also sizeable taxes against tractors at the same time.
No matter what the outcome the Germans have shown just how much they care about agreements, ethics or people's health. The Germans, just like the French and Italians, signed the 1998 ACEA agreement. The Germans have not honored that agreement, while the French and Italians have managed to meet the target before the 2008 deadline (2007 figures are already inline).
Besides not respecting the ACEA agreement, the EU is taking VW to court for not respecting EU shareholding regulations and Porsche is suing the City of London for trying to protect its citizens from the tractors. Rules simply don't apply to the Germans.
No matter what the outcome of the debates in Bruxelles, the individual countries in Europe will push ahead with CO2-based regulations (and not how the Germans may manipulate the EU regulation), and the German automakers will have really made a name for themselves. What a lot of free publicity for the Germans!
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eddy 5:17PM (5/27/2008)
Germany's automotive industry is still the biggest employer in Germany, and they have a lot of problems. With the high prices you could think the margins are very good, but they had big loses with dangerous expansions in the 90s. BMW and Mercedes still have massive debt from their takeovers of Rover and Chrysler. Volkswagen had very big reliability problems with the Mark IV Golf and all models deduced from it. They destroyed their good reputation with that cars and lost a lot of money, which they needed for projects like the Audi Duo or the 3l-car and the 1L-car. Basically cars sold with a VW badge don't make big profits in Europe. VWs biggest markets are China and Brasil. Audi and Skoda are the only cash cows in the European market. Another big problem is a massive lack of good young engineers: Germany's bad education system just doesn't produce enough good engineers nowadays.
P.S.: CO2 based taxation will be introduced in Germany in 2009. The other big point is the German petrol taxes, which are extremely high. The average price for one liter of gasoline is 1,50€/liter (8,96 $ (US) per gallon (US)). That is a very big incentive. Smaller more efficient cars sell very well at the moment.
P.P.S.:
Basically negative publicity for Germany doesn't change anything. We are always the "bad guys". I think our "Nazi -history" has made our bad reputation and we just can't change it.
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Karl-Uwe Strunzen 9:55PM (5/27/2008)
Negative publicity, especially of this kind, does change plenty of things. There isn't a single manufacturer out there today without an "ECO" model branding of some sort. Manufacturers are bending over backwards today to seem more environmentally-friendly. And most are doing this by working on far more than appearances and prototypes. The CO2-based taxes in Europe have shaped consumer choices in a very obvious way. If one adds to this the soaring fuel prices, then this kind of bad publicity is obviously extremely damaging in the current climate.
If the German car lobbyists have succeeded in avoiding CO2 taxes up to now, there's no reason to believe anything will change in 2009. It's better to announce such a thing once it has happened rather than make empty claims. Why stop at one's Nazi history, when there's plenty of Nazism today? Who else has 18 self-declared Nazi parliamentarians (12 NPD + 6 DVU)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Party_of_Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVU
The "superior German technology!" bit is drummed into kiddies today as it was back then.....the mentality is the same.
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eddy 7:37AM (5/28/2008)
@Karl-Uwe
Again your point is typical for the German greens. Nazi Germany is a thing of the past and so is Nazi mentality. And not everything about Germany is bad. We were technology leaders in Europe for several years. Everybody remembers names like von Braun, von Ardenne, Heisenberg, Planck, Gauß, Liebig, Bosch, Porsche, Benz, Daimler,Junkers, Focke, Karmann, Otto, Diesel, Roentgen, Zuse, and Einstein for the great innovations they made. We had some golden age of technology, but our bad education system brought this to an end. Many things about the "superior German technology" statement are based on a great past without an equivalent in our modern time. That are things that do not need to be drummed in children's minds. Reading the names of physical units or terms for special technological solutions gives you a hint that there was a golden age of technology in Germany. Another reason why Germans are proud of their technology is that they can't be proud of their history for obvious reasons and because they did not have great philosophers or great cultural works like most other European countries. Nowadays our biggest problem is that we live massively better than we should in our situation: We would need to drastically lower the expensive social standards to stay competitive and to invest in modern technology and education of engineers. At the moment lobbyism and corruption are necessary evils to hold our social state.
"Why stop at one's Nazi history, when there's plenty of Nazism today?"
The German nationalist parties are a small minority. No real danger for democracy and they are just some east German unemployed lower-class idiots. 10% of the French can vote for Front-National in the presidential election and no one would brag about the nationalist idiots in France, but if there are some parliamentarians of a nationalist party without political power in an east German state parliament, everybody states that"Germany has still a lot of Nazism". Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlaams_Belang
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_National_(France)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Alternative
There are enough idiots in every European country.
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M1EK 10:48AM (5/28/2008)
Look, whatever we think of the merits here, can we all agree that they did a pretty good job on the Flintstones-mobile?
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Karl-Uwe Strunzen 12:40PM (5/28/2008)
Otto, Diesel.... who are they?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_cycle#The_Otto_cycle
I am unfamiliar with the great past you refer to
Look, the French, Italians and UK have a lot more such names and units and certainly don't have this special German nationalist attitude towards it: Ampere, Volta, Watt, Descartes, Broglie, Meucci, Marconi, Coriolis, Coulomb, Galvani, Curie, Rubbia, Fermi, Fresnel, Pascal, Fibonacci, Galilei, Appleton, Bragg, Young, Newton, bla bla bla bla ........
on another occasion I have already illustrated how Europe's Space, Naval, Aircraft, Semiconductor and now even the drive for "Ecological" mobility is driven by other countries and certainly not by Germany. This is despite Germany being the largest country in terms of population and GDP.
One of the common features of Europe's most high-tech programs, such as the Neuron UAV, the Vega satellite launcher, the Fremm-Horizon naval programme, the Numonyx semiconductor JV with STMicro, etc etc is that they involve no German participation WHATSOEVER....
Parties such as Front National exist in every country. Front National wish to clamp down on uncontrolled immigration and want to redefine relationships with the EU. If you look for example at what the EU has been doing (because of Germany) on programs such as car CO2 limits and the Galileo program, I'd say this is more than reasonable.
It's quite a leap of the imagination to jump from FN to the likes of the NPD. Every country has an equivalent of FN today in Europe. There is however a "natural shift" in Germany, where all parties are shifted to the right. What is considered "center" in Germany is already right-wing elsewhere. What you will find ONLY in Germany is a self-declared Nazi party with elected parliamentarians and party rallies full of swastikas. You won't find this elsewhere in Europe for any party with elected parliamentarians (in the case of the NPD with over 9% of votes.)
"..they are just some east German unemployed lower-class idiots". >9% can no longer be considered marginal.
"another reason why Germans are proud of their technology is that they can't be proud of their history". First of all this is a totally illogical statement. Secondly the countries that ARE involved in the high-tech European programs above most certainly don't have this "attitude" (and this is not a coincidence).
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Ping 7:04AM (5/29/2008)
...arrested for "public order offences?" is there no freedom of speech in Belgium?
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Karl-Uwe Strunzen 11:07AM (5/29/2008)
there is..... usually
but certain interests are at stake here...
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