You can't seriously leave it to the oil industry to self-regulate in order to avoid environmental catastrophe. It's a bit like saying that tobacco companies must self regulate to avoid health problems for smokers.
So what do they both do? Seek out new marketplaces where environmental legislation isn't quite so stringent and exploit them. It's why we have the oil companies still selling leaded fuel to the third world and sportsmen going into Russia and the far east to market cigarettes.
Global warming is a potential serious problem, but we've got our priorities WAY wrong.
In the UK, we have the most expensive petrol/diesel prices in Europe "to discourage inefficient use". Problem is that the humble motor car accounts for less than 8% of greenhouse emissions, seeing as engine technology has far advanced beyond the scope of the legislators.
Blair's environmental message is to "Cut global warming and CO2 emissions". So what's happened? We're shutting nuclear plants at an unprecidented rate. What's replacing them? Natural Gas fired power stations (even with a GCSE in chemistry I can work the rest out).
While the motorist is being hit with ever increasing bills, our CO2 emissions are increasing because of the shortfall in power generation caused by the decomissioned nuclear plants.
Air travel is growing at an alarming rate and in raw terms a Boeing 747 will burn as much fuel in one transatlantic cruise as my Alfa Romeo V6 will in 144 years. Guess how much fuel duty is incurred by aviation fuel sales in Britain? Nada.
Why aren't we being more energy efficient? Instead, we're having our skylines blighted by wind farms, which although they count as renewable energy aren't nearly as efficient as they need to be.
In what must be the first known instance of common sense in their eight year history, The government's environmental committee have concluded that perhaps shutting down so many nuclear plants wasn't so clever after all. All we need to do now is spend the billions of pounds needed to bring them online and at least we have an interim solution until nuclear fusion steps off the pages of a sci-fi novel and into reality.
