Fuel protests herald grim times for European green policy

[The2ndWheel]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080528.wgreen28/BNStory/International/home

After hundreds of angry drivers shut down highways in England Tuesday in protest against green automobile taxes, and drivers and fishermen in France and Spain paralyzed their ports and roads in a fuel-tax protest, politicians began to signal Europe's ambitious emission-control policies may soon have to be abandoned.

While Europe has led the way in using tax incentives to encourage people to buy low-emission cars and to build carbon-neutral houses in order to meet Kyoto targets, it has become increasingly apparent that inflation-battered voters are no longer willing to go along.

Political leaders in Britain and France are seeking the reversal of tax policies designed to make polluting vehicles more expensive, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and some British ministers calling on their own governments and the European Union to relax ecologically friendly taxes in order to give relief to citizens suffering from fast-rising food and fuel prices.

[GliderGuider]

1. Did anyone seriously doubt this would happen?

When we are faced with economic difficulties all of a sudden resource, environmental and ecological issues are shoved to the very back of the bus.

People wonder why folks like us are such pessimists? This is why. Mankind is not perfectible -- in the herd, immediate concerns will always triumph over future risks. It's all explained here: The Hyperbolic Discount Function. As it ever was, thus shall it ever be, as far as the human animal is concerned.