Court orders government to cut smog

While I think the comments from Vimeous and artill are quite sensible I suspect that the UK Government (regardless of its political make up) will do exactly what it did last time when CO2 was seen as the big issue - use a blunt instrument. The Brown Administration simply gave lower VED and other tax breaks to diesels because they had lower CO2 emissions than petrols. Result - too many diesels on the road causing particulate and NO2 pollution which is very dangerous to human health. Add to this the head long rush of manufacturers to sell diesels which have a larger profit margin and dealers mis-selling to customers who do not drive enough miles a year to benefit from a diesel and causing them potential DPF failure issues (also adding to pollution) and the result is the Supreme Court decision. This time around I expect we will see huge rises in duty on diesel fuel, increases in VED on diesels beyond the rates for petrols and punitive tax regulations for companies with diesels in their fleet. Result - a collapse in diesel used values (as happened to petrols), fewer diesels being bought and a new increase in CO2 and we will be back to where we started. As mentioned above in relation to London and the ULEZ the real issue is to provide a proper infrastructure for the use of electric vehicles and more useable petrol-electric hybrids and full electric cars to be developed. Interestingly BMW has announced a 330e hybrid as part of the face-lifted 3 Series range and no doubt we will see a 318e and 320e in due course as BMW chops the diesels from its range.