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Pollution and the environment
A common misconception of people is that a 4x4 used more fuel than anything else. Firstly, the lowest MPG ratings are supercars - not 4x4s. 4x4s are annoying because they are too big and you cannot see around them, not because of economy.
Gas Guzzlers
So lets move onto supercars destroying the planet more than micro-cars. Lets take an example of a supercar that does 1MPG and a micro-car that does 100MPG, driven over a year. Which one does the most damage?
No, wrong. It is the one that burns the most petrol in the year. Thats it.
Saying Governments could tax also pre-supposes that they don't already. Of course they do - it's called petrol tax, which you may recall is rather high. If you move so your journey is half the distance, I can guarantee that you'll pay half the tax for your journeys.
Daft people who want £2000 road tax for gas-guzzling cars completely fail to realise that these cars are hardly every driven high mileages - look at some Ferrari adverts and you'll see the tiny mileages for yourself. The real culprits are the people who buy regular sized cars, the mondeos and 3 series of this world, and do 20,000-30,000 miles a year, when someones big bad school-run 4x4 probably does about 3,000 as a second car. A 3 series is not 10 times as efficient as a 4x4!!
The 'green tax' we already pay
We are already taxed almost 75% on petrol - and therefore energy used, this is the perfect green tax.
You use more, you pay more tax. It's simple.
If a 'gas-guzzler' is going to be taxed a high road tax each year then he'll do what I do: get better value for money by driving it as hard and as far as possible, to bring down the tax %age paid. Every time my road tax arrives now, I have to make sure I'm using the car enough to warrant paying for it, the relative cost of petrol being pretty cheap. For example, £200 road tax gives me 4 tanks of fun juice, so that's just covering the cost of the tax - i.e. I view them as free smile miles, probably averaging about 10mpg. I still burn far less than next doors 'sensible' 3 series who at 30,000 miles will use about 1000gallons that year, as opposed to my 100.
The cost of economical new cars
So scientifically and rationally, the pious small car driver peering over at your interesting/powerful car - chances are they are damaging the planet significantly more than you are!!
Pollution is directly proportional to quantity of petrol burnt, and that's before we get onto economic questions like 'how much pollution is caused by diverting money from petrol into buying other stuff in the shops'?
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