Statutory Warning! British Labour MP says cars should carry climate health warnings
Way back in 1965, the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act required cigarette manufacturers to place those little blurbs warning smokers of the dangers of using their products. Might a similar label be placed on advertisement from the auto industry? Don’t laugh – if Colin Challen, chair of the all-party climate change group in the UK, gets his wish, just such a thing might happen. He says:
You maybe have 25 or 35% of the space of any promotional material given over to a health warning. These warnings would be graded depending on the emissions from the vehicle, with the worst gas-guzzlers carrying the most severe warnings. It would have to counter the impression given by some manufacturers that their vehicles are greener.
We are in a four-stage process of addressing the challenge of climate change, as Britain was in a four-stage process meeting the challenge of Adolf Hitler: denial, appeasement, phoney war then total war. I believe we are staggering between appeasement and phoney war at the present time. Our effort is improving, but in dribs and drabs, suggesting that we’ve not entirely convinced ourselves that the threat is real. It is as if we have grasped that the scientific debate has been settled but the hard, practical choices still have to pass through a multitude of sceptical arguments.”