Say no to fossilised transport! Join the buying strike on latest model new fossil fuelled motor cars. Say yes to alternative green electric cars now.

Today's topic is about saying no to fossilised transport and arguing we should institute a buying strike on newly produced fossil fuelled motor cars (i.e. petrol or diesel powered).

The bench on which we chat, discuss and debate these matters is the Cartgate Picnic area just off the carbon dioxide and fume filled noisy A303 where I stopped on my way to the Swanage Folk Festival for a comfort break last weekend.

My thoughts about a buying strike came out of a feeling of personal frustration that I, as an individual, am unable to change anything and a feeling that we really do need to take action that will effectively reduce carbon dioxide pollution and global warming.

Forget writing to the Government or your MP, you will be ignored. Forget writing to the Civil Service, they won't reply. Forget Local Authority consultation systems, they are totally unaudited and unaccountable.

All these options suffer from the same disadvantage which is that all these public organisations hide behind the concept of 'representative government'. In other words, once elected, they make all the decisions and know everything. Unless you are powerful and can pay millions for Parliamentary lobby services, your opinion will be ignored. Multi-national oil and car companies are powerful and can afford to lobby in their interests.

Take global warming. We know there is a problem. The scientists tell us so. The car industry, however, tells us that there is no alternative yet to one of the main polluters which is the humble car that we all drive in our daily lives.

How can we get them to move faster when they have a vested interest in stalling development in this area? The car companies have billions invested in conventional fuel technology and the oil companies liquid gold would depreciate rapidly in an economy that no longer burned its product to get to work. Neither of these organisations have any vested interest in moving from conventional combustion powered motor vehicles.

So, what can we as individuals do to get things moving?

Perhaps you have an idea about how we can get the car companies to produce electric cars for us to buy. If so, I would like to hear them. However, here is one proposal that we could perhaps try out.

Why don't we simply campaign to SAY NO TO BUYING NEW FOSSIL FUELLED FACTORY FINISHED CARS.

Quite simply, faced with a buying strike on new cars, the car companies would have to bring forward solutions. They would have an incentive they couldn't refuse.

Of course, the car companies would argue that technology doesn't exist that will work yet. This is rubbish, simply check out the Tesla to see what can be done if there is any will whatsoever.

So what do you think. Would a buying strike on new cars, unless they were fully electric, give the car companies a big enough kick up their behinds to get them moving. (Frankly, with the credit crunch, few of us may have the disposable income anyway so we probably wouldn't be losing very much by sticking with what we have and not buying new replacement cars.)

Perhaps it's time for us individuals to say we want our voices heard. We want action.

WE SAY NO TO BUYING NEW FOSSIL FUELLED CARS!

Your comments are welcomed, as always :-)

Bye for now

Rob

Rob Hopcott - online author