It should hardly come as a surprise that total both passenger and especially, freight traffic should have increased since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the eastward expansion to a Union of 27 that is home to 500 million people.

For example, VW and others now assemble many of their vehicles in former Communist countries but 80% of the parts still come from suppliers in the West. Most of the vehicles are sold in the West, as well. This has created jobs and prosperity for several of the new members and put much-needed competitive pressure on powerful Western labor unions, but CO2 emissions have gone up as well.

One obvious way to reduce them would be to shift more of the heavy freight (like cars and car parts) back to rail freight. Unfortunately, there are many technological and organizational hurdles to overcome - all of which were put in place deliberately to slow down the invading armies that mercifully haven't come in the last 60 years.

However, the EU Commission is now seeking to raise the
minimum level of diesel fuel tax and force places like hitherto-exempt Luxembourg to levy them. The idea is to curb "fuel tourism" by truckers. This is said to distort the road freight market and generate real additional CO2 emissions.

It also saddles countries with relatively low fuel taxes with higher CO2 emissions than the statistics would otherwise show. For example, Austria will have to shell out approx. EUR 1 billion for emissions certificates to make up for its apparent failure to meet its Kyoto targets - but Germans and Italians that are just passing through tend to fill up here rather than at home.

As a "fringe benefit", raising taxes on diesel would reduce and in some cases eliminate the preferential treatment it currently enjoys over petrol. In some member states, refineries must import additional diesel and sell excess petrol because new vehicle registrations have been skewed toward diesels for so long, with predictable consequences for air quality. Unfortunately, if diesel passenger cars were to lose market share to petrol, it would also mean a further increase in CO2 emissions - even if mild hybrid technology were widely adopted.

Stan.

The U.S., in refusing to raise its fuel economy standards to any significant extent over the last couple of decades has chosen to let the "free" market determine what kinds of cars we drive with respect to gas mileage. The result is that the U.S. has a much lower mpg average than Europe which chose long ago to heavily tax gasoline. Your dream of the free market achieving a better result than so called Government is just pure nonsense. That is, of course, unless you are perfectly happy with the status quo in the U.S.

Taxes have consequences. Europe has chosen to encourage diesel over gasoline. Failure to impose sufficiently rigorous pollution standards on diesels and diesel itself has resulted in a higher level of traditional pollution but a lower level of co2 emissions than would otherwise been emitted. Whether or not this was a correct policy choice is for the people to decide, but it is erroneous to conclude that the Government was ineffective by encouraging diesel. For that matter, there a lot of people in the U.S. who would be glad to tradeoff some of the ill effects of diesel by obtining the lower co2 emissions of diesel. This is a policy choice but says nothing about the efficacy or lack thereof of government imposed solutions.

My guess is that a really free market in the U.S. without the intervention of the EPA would have resulted in the polluted cities that you complain about with respect to Europe. I think, however, we can avoid polluted cities and high levels of co2 simultaneously. We have established very rigorous standards for diesels. Is that not your preference?

You seem to believe that the free market will magically deliver us from our high level of carbon emissions. It is not happening and won't happen unless there are consequences for people's actions. Taxes on carbon are a way of ensuring those consequences. But you are in luck. Thus far, we in the U.S. have refused to make any policy choices regarding the reduction of carbon.

While I do not think that diesel should get preferential treatment, that is just my policy preference. While I may not agree with the policies in Europe, it does not follow that government is somehow evil and/or incompetent or that the free market would provide a result more to my particular personal preference.

Well Tom, I am happy with the status quo in the US. I had no trouble finding a 5 passenger car that gets 40 mpg. I think cafe standards and carbon taxes is just code is just code for government intrusion.

Tom:

I believe that European governments did not choose to encourage diesel over gasoline. They just taxed personal transportation, mainly fuel, but cars too, to the upper level accepted by population – just to increase the revenue. First it was OK with people because cars were considered luxury items, than because environmental sentiments that cars are dirty, and when clean gasoline cars appeared – and only than – climate change sentiment kicked in. Taxes first, than CO2. Same as it was with climate change: temperature first, than CO2.

Diesel fuel enjoyed less taxes for very simple reason: it was and is blood of commercial transportation. So it was only natural, that distorted by government’s overtaxation market switched to more efficient and less taxed engines and fuel –diesel cars. The final result – slightly less oil import, much more air pollution, and more climate changing emissions to that matter.

The last claim calls for explanation. CO2 is not the only GH emission from cars. Diesel cars also emit diesel soot, which is extremely potent GH agent. IPCC 2007 report doubled the heating potential of Black Carbon particles (BC) to 0.2 W/m2, compared to 1.5W/m2 for CO2. They, of course, were shy to put it into Summary and masked it together with other aerosols. Think for a minute, tiny amount of BC particles have 12% heating potential of CO2 , which is emitted in huge amounts. You can find it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulate#Black_carbon

This effect is well known and researched, just google “black carbon” + “climate change” There are hundreds of articles, notably with James Hansen from NASA as co-author. Just yesterday I bumped into article of M. Jacobson in Journal of Geophysical Research, which makes direct comparison for diesel and gasoline cars. The result: “diesel cars emitting continuously under most resent US and EU particulate emission standards (0.08g/mi 0.05g/km) may warm climate per distance driven more then equivalent gasoline cars. Toughening emission standards by a factor of 8 does not change this conclusion…” :

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/fossil/ClimRespUpdJGR%201.pdf

Well, I am not to tell to people of Europe what to do (but I do expect it to be mutual). All in all, every people deserve the governments they have.

In the end the us will have many bioreactors churning out biofuels and grass farms making ethanol and wind farms and solararrays belting out electric and h2 and and and.

China certainly has the power and money to convert to whatever fuel cources work out so does the us and we both have the time unlike europe.

Europe is in the hot seat as far as globalwarming goes asthey are farmore vulnerable to it and far too weak to REALY do anything about it.

Thats what realy upsets you doesnt it? The us and china can afford to take thier time but you cant and there is NOTHING you can do about it.

Until we have substitute carbon-neutral fuels that can fill the role that fossil fuels do today, any efforts at curbing emissions will meet with limited success at best. That's reality as I see it.

Andrey.

Since you seem to believe that global warming is a non problem, your analysis of the relative merits of different fuels is irrelevant. With respect to the carbon credit issue, I agree that this represents a gross failure on the part of the EU. The problem is that they issued too many damn credits in the first place which drove down their cost. From what I read in The Economist magazine this has been recently been corrected and the cost of carbon credit is on the way back up.

I don't think anyone is arguing that Kyoto is sufficient too meaningful deal with global warming. Even if the U.S. congress has introduced bills that go way beyond Kyoto. Even if passed, however, they will not be signed by President Bush. Maybe better luck in next congress.

In one area you are correct. We cannot only think about carbon when we think about greenhouse gases. In evaluating a fuel, we need to look at the full impact from all gases.

In the area of transportation, I think that people make this problem seem harder than it is. The average mpg of the current U.S. fleet is around 17 mpg. A Prius gets close to 50 mpg and could accomodate the needs of most drivers as it is a mid sized vehicle. Further technological progress is in the cards and the next generation should get even better gas mileage. EVs and PHEVs may improve the situation even more, but I don't think we have to wait for a magic bullet to make real progress.