Diesel Car Chatter

Focus, the German news magazine, probably delivered the best article in months on the German diesel crisis, and opened up a massive 'gate'.  It is well worth sitting down and spending 10 minutes looking at the commentary, the data and the consequences.

So, here's the ultimate shocker.....if you use the EU 'number' from the 1990s which was to ensure clean air for all EU citizens.....there are over 335 communities and cities in Germany which would be in dire straits. 

But they get to the point of emphasizing that it's not just diesel particles which drive the concern.  Gas particles add up as well, and they even note the circumstances around Stuttgart where dust from the subway tunnels are now being considered as a problem. 

After reading through the piece, I sat and contemplated how civilization would exist in these 335 cities....if you suddenly pulled the EU 'lever' and shut down a quarter to half of the transportation avenues around towns.  Would mass transit even be able to cover the requirements?  Would you have to double the number of trams, subways and buses to reach some survival point?  It all adds up to a fairly serious and harsh reality. 

If it is that bad in terms of health consequences.....then why remain there in a charged-up and unhealthy atmosphere?  Why not pack up and move 40 kilometers outside of these metropolitan zones? 

If anything, this whole crisis period with the diesel cars and the EU clean air situation....has opened up a vast discussion, and it's consuming an awful lot of trust in the government.  If the EU standard for clean air is not readily proven or based on a faulty research project from the early 1990s....are we creating a huge mess for nothing?  If you drive out this diesel car business and the particles don't improve much.....what is the second step, and can the public accept a quarter of some city being declared as a 'no-car' zone?

I sat this morning on my balcony as the sun rose here in Germany.  It's awful cold and it was just a brief minute or two.  But I gazed out across the valley, and this village of three-thousand people.  There in this freezing temperature, you could see various chimneys in operation and pumping out soot and fumes....to heat each house.  The odds that in this small village.....this might add up to a point of violating the EU clean air regulation?  Well....here's the one positive....we don't have a 'station' to monitor and measure clean-air levels. So we don't have a problem.  If we did add a station and found bad numbers?  Yeah, it opens up this massive problem.  Oddly, it'd have nothing to do with diesel cars.