January 08, 2007

Which green is best for the environment and our pockets?

Sir, on January 8 FT carried on the same page stories about GM’s plug-in car and Toyota’s hybrid petrol-electric car, both of which have a market niche primarily because they are environmentally friendly, though in fact no one really knows how friendly they really are or how much that friendliness really costs. A world that is in so much need of sounder environmental behavior, which costs money, also urgently needs some truly neutral environmental advise to help it navigate and pick among all the green tonics that are currently peddled. Perhaps the best thing an environmental conscious motorist could do is to buy himself a traditional car and invest whatever he saved by not buying a green into something that is in environmental and economic terms, more efficient. The World Bank could perhaps have a role to play as that wise green arbitrator, of course as long as it can avoid being captured itself by windmill and solar panel-producers.