"Dave Baker" wrote in message
...

Whenever governments get involved in things like the environment A) they
cock it up and B) they run into big business interests which generally
don't want things changed. Numerous examples spring to mind.

Without the govt getting involved in the environment, a lot of things would
be for the worse. OTOH a lot of things might be for the better - often
brownfield sites where development is encouraged by planning rules have far
more nature conservation value than farmland where development would be nigh
on unthinkable in many cases.

1) My house has 80 year old single glazed metal framed Crittal windows.
They have the insulation properties of tissue paper and leak like sieves
anyway, but if I want to replace them with double glazed windows I have to
pay for building approval.

Double glazing is a bugbear of mine. If you want to replace them at all,
you'll have to replace them with double glazing. Double glazing has a
payback time of around 100 years last time I checked, and you're lucky if
the windows last 20 years. OTOH a lot of 100 year old houses still have
original wooden windows...

3) Cows generate more greenhouse gas than all the cars in the world
combined. They also turn grain into meat at an efficiency of only about
8lbs per lb. If we really wanted to eliminate both global warming and
world hunger we'd quadruple the tax on meat and remove it on grain sold
for human consumption.

The average house also consumes far more energy for heating than the two
cars sat on the drive. Therefore it produces more CO2. But we don't have
everyone insulating their old houses to hell and back. We just tax people
for driving around.

I think that's one of the strongest arguments against global warming - if
Govts really believed it was real, they'd discourage the things that produce
*big* amounts of CO2. Instead they use it as an excuse to tax cars...