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Faced with big penalties, carmakers are improving efficiency
THERE is nothing like high oil prices and swingeing new penalties on carbon-spewing vehicles to concentrate the minds of carmakers. The European Commission plans to impose penalties on companies by 2012 if their fleets emit over 130 grams of carbon dioxide per km (g/km). After much complaining about the technical impossibility of compliance (especially from German makers of big luxury cars), companies have got on with rolling out new technologies to improve efficiency. BMW cut its average fleet emissions by 7.3% last year by using “efficient dynamics” across its range, according to T&E, a transport think-tank. Many carmakers saw little improvement, partly because cars got 10kg heavier on average. PSA Peugeot-Citroen and Renault are best placed to meet the 2012 target.
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Naming the stand-off between Russia and the West
DEFINING the beginning and end of the old cold war—let alone is the issues at stake—is tricky. Did it start with Lenin? With Stalin? Or with the Iron Curtain’s erection in Europe at the end of the second world war? And when did it end? With the Helsinki Accords of 1973, or with Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika?
Historians can quibble indefinitely, but a rough definition might be that the cold war was an era of rivalry, both military and ideological, between two global superpowers. It started with the Berlin airlift of 1948, and petered out in the 1980s. ...
The rubbish mountains grow
OVER 2.1 billion tonnes of rubbish were dumped around the world last year. Rich countries are the most wasteful, with each person chucking away 1.4kg of solid trash every day, but this has levelled off in recent years as the rich try to create less of it and to recycle more. As poorer nations grow richer they will produce more waste. In 2004 China surpassed America as the largest producer of rubbish: by 2030 it will be churning out nearly 500m tonnes a year.
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But a few reasons for hope in Kashmir
NOT so long ago, Kashmir seemed a rarity among the globe’s interminable, intractable conflicts, in that it actually seemed to be improving. It was no longer cited as the conflagration most likely to spark a nuclear war. The two countries contesting sovereignty—India and Pakistan—were not about to resolve their dispute; yet, slowly but surely, they were building better relations.
The international press ran articles about peace settling on the area most scarred by bloodshed—the Indian-administered, Muslim-majority Kashmir valley. Tourists were returning, lolling on houseboats on the magical lakes, skiing in the gorgeous mountains, or enjoying a golfing paradise. ...
