and taken from the green party site, if this gets the go ahead in the budget, dont be fooled it is not a green issue its a short term solution to using our money to support a industry that has lost its cumtomers and wants bailing out
"Cars "should be quality-built to last"
The Green Party's national spokesperson on sustainable development, transport consultant Professor John Whitelegg, last week told Classic Car Weekly, a magazine which is running an online petition against scrappage (1, 2):
"In the Green Party's view, cars - like most things - should be quality-built to last. They should be capable of being upgraded and retrofitted as technology improves.
"Some years ago a study showed that if a car's life was extended from ten years to twenty, there were significant benefits in terms of both pollution and employment. Specifically, doubling the car's life reduced its lifetime energy-use by 42% compared with scrapping it and building a new one, because repair and maintenance were more energy-efficient than new manufacture. And at the same time it increased the labour involved by 56%, because repair and maintenance were more labour-intensive than new manufacture.
"This is a very important factor as we try to tackle both a recession and the climate crisis - we need jobs and we need reduced emissions - so we need to go with the processes that involve more labour and less energy use. And that ultimately means building cars to last, then looking after them.
"Scrapping a perfectly good car is an outrageous thing to do from a Green Party perspective. Some 15% of the total energy associated with the car is in its manufacture - what's called the "embodied energy" - and when you scrap the car before its useful life has ended, that's energy thrown away.
"There is uproar in Germany at the moment over the present scheme, and with good reason. A lot of people are trading-in relatively efficient cars and buying new cars which are up to four times worse. For us Greens, that's entirely the wrong policy, both because we need to create jobs and because we need to reduce energy-use."
Notes
1. Classic Car Weekly's case against scrappage can be found at http://www.great-cars.co.uk/images/stories/pdfs/ccw-scrapthescrappage.pdf.
2. Classic Car Weekly's online petition to "scrap the scrappage" can be found at http://www.great-cars.co.uk/petition/ccw-petition-apr09.php.
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BNP go green by 'kudos' (14 Apr 2009 @ 23:17)
