The campaign to demonise diesel cars – above all other causes of city air pollution – rumbles on, as The Local reports. The conundrum being of course that Germany makes vast sums from sales of diesel cars, trucks, buses etc. As usual climate is wrongly conflated with air quality issues.
Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday pledged a billion euros to help German cities fight air pollution caused by dirty diesel cars, as a scandal strangling the automobile industry threatened to engulf politicians at the height of the election campaign.
Merkel said she was doubling financial aid to cities from a previously announced €500 million, in a bid to stave off the threat of an all-out ban against diesel vehicles.
The public health threat posed by nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions came to the fore after Germany’s biggest carmaker Volkswagen admitted in September 2015 to fitting millions of cars worldwide with illegal devices to cheat pollution tests.
The scandal has since widened, with other German carmakers under scrutiny over collusion allegations.
With elections looming on September 24th, Merkel and other politicians have a tight-rope to walk between balancing public health safety and securing millions of jobs in the vital automobile sector.
The emissions cheating scandal has also depressed the resale value of diesel cars, and urban driving bans would sharply accelerate the trend – a powerful election issue for millions of drivers.
Following a meeting with 30 mayors whose cities or towns are threatening diesel bans, Merkel said she would stump up the cash to help them develop cleaner transport infrastructure.
“Half of the sum will be at the charge of automobile manufacturers and the other half the federal state,” said Merkel.
The immediate priority is to “prevent driving bans”, stressed Merkel, mindful she has to protect the crucial industrial sector whose global titans like VW, Audi, Mercedes and BMW earn billions of euros in exports and employ between 800,000 and 900,000 people.
While Merkel has often spoken of her long-term vision of a carbon-free economy run by climate friendly green technology, she made clear last week that, when it comes to the diesel issue, “this is 2017”.
Continued here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
Frau Merkel could have saved €1BILLION if she hadn’t yielded to the Greenpeace wing of government who forced her to jettison CO2-free nuclear energy, in the wake of Fukushima.
She could have used nukes to save Energiewende too, and not had to call on the beautiful black (or brown) rock for energy reality!
Got ya’self in a real tangle there Angela.
Ouch.
If all the diesel cars were replaced by some other types of cars, how much difference would it make to city air quality? A little rather than a lot probably, as all the other reasons for atmospheric pollution would still be there. Worth a billion euros?
Scotland sets 2032 ban on new diesel and petrol cars, funds carbon capture
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/09/05/scotland-ban-new-diesel-petrol-cars-eight-years-ahead-rest-uk/
LPG?
When dentists stop using NOx (aka Laughing Gas) I might start to believe that NOx vehicle emissions are in any way a danger. This anti-diesel kerfuffle is yet another con. What piece of modernity will be the next target – running water?
There is a major irony and hypocrisy in this:
https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/air-quality-in-europe-2016
See Section 3 dedicated to “Residential biomass combustion: an important source of air pollution”
Contributions from residential wood combustion to PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations during the winter (heating) period range from < 5 % to 40 % of daily means
The law of unintended consequences, which in fact are not so unintended when the EU and its Member States fail to follow their own legal requirements related to assessment and public participation before they pull this ideology out of their arse:
Click to access ece.mp.pp.2017.39_auec.pdf
Click to access ECE_MP.PP_2017_25_E.pdf
When the EU bans IC cars, will the automakers still manufacture them for the saner rest of the world?
The answer is simple….go back to steam engines. Slow to start (so people will be reluctant to make unnecessary trips). Slow to accelerate and limited in top speed (so cutting down autobahn traffic) and clumsy and costly to fuel with natural biofuel i.e. wood logs (hence forests disappear).
Even better have them preceded by a man on foot with a red flag (that last will appeal to the Greens).
All these will cut down NOx values by an infinitessimal amount and cost enormous sums, accompanied by huge environmental damage, all surely in line with EU policy.
Bribing the voter with they’re own money has always been a vote winner in most countries.
Oops — proof reading fail again…
Bribing the voter with their own money has always been a vote winner in most countries.
spetzer says ‘When the EU bans IC cars…’
At the moment it’s down to national policy if/when any bans take effect.
Scotland seems to be offering itself as the guinea pig with its proposed 2032 ban, but it may not happen.
If new car buyers were to order from England instead it would be bad for Scottish car dealers but not much else.
Graeme No.3, your statement is/was true for the very early steam cars but then the Stanley brother came along and produced the Stanley Steamer which used a flash boiler giving almost instant starting, a twin cylinder engine that allowed the Steamer to attain hold the world speed record for years. The one big drawback was their lack of a condenser to allow reuse of used steam.