Pertinent Pagoda Politics

[glennard]

With cautious trepidation- There are forces in America that want to put the 'antique car' folk(us) out of existence.  We all have a considerable investment-time, financial, emotional, etc.- in our autos. What are the positions of these potential administrations on us?  I dare say none of us want our garages to become cemeterys for 113s.

[Peter van Es]

Similar forces are at work everywhere in Europe too. In Germany and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, they tried to ban cars over 25 years old from city centres on account of too much pollution.

Usually when someone explains to politicians that introducing a law that affects less than 0.001% of pollution and is pretty expensive to enforce, they see the light and drop these measures.

General road pricing (like the congestion charge in London) means we will avoid city centres with our old(er) cars anyway.

The biggest danger in my view is probably oil running out and petrol becoming prohibitively expensive. Not much politicians can do about that. Anyone's guess though at when exactly that will happen...

Peter

[dixy2k]

same talk about guns, etc.
nothing will happen. It is just an election year. Every politician needs to rally some people behind him/her.

[waqas]

Obviously, cost of ownership will go up as petrol becomes scarce. And pollution is not a right, but I can't imagine an outright ban on driving these machines...  Once carbon trading becomes the norm, it'll be just another maintenance item.

[mbzse]

quote:Originally posted by vanesp

.../..
The biggest danger in my view is probably oil running out and petrol becoming prohibitively expensive. Not much politicians can do about that. Anyone's guess though at when exactly that will happen...Peter

I remember in the early seventies, the doomsday arguments had me (I was around 20 yrs old then) really worried about oil in our world running out by the year 2000... There were many "experts" back then that showed graphs and argued very convincingly.
Today, well...
Hence, my belief in "experts" has dimnished considerably
 

quote:Similar forces are at work everywhere in Europe too...

That's for sure. The Green parties are certainly active
.

[MichaelB.]

I am a member of several organizations that continue to work with the policy makers so that we can have a long happy life with our vintage iron.

Lots of things going on in favor of people just like us. A large meeting at SEMA/APEX happens about this time every year. I try to be part of it as often as possible and contribute to the meetings when I can. We have a lot of friends on our side in high places but it takes work to keep forward momentum.

Hopefully the positive work will continue.