[DougTheMac]

Contrasting protests in France and UK today.

In France, large scale (well over 100K protestors) and violent (1 death, numerous injuries & arrests) protests, blocking many roads, against increases in taxation on road diesel (bringing this historically cheap fuel in France up to about the same price as in UK).

In UK, a moderate-sized (6K?) protest blocking several Thames bridges, protesting against our continuing dependence on fossil fuels. (UK has done a lot to reduce, but as everywhere, not nearly enough).

Meantime, nuclear fusion, the only hope for large scale green energy in the future, has recently had a big boost (ha ha) from the UK government - £84M - about 20% of the recently announced fund to repair potholes.

Sometimes I despair...

 

[johnd]

Meantime, nuclear fusion, the only hope for large scale green energy in the future, has recently had a big boost (ha ha) from the UK government - £84M - about 20% of the recently announced fund to repair potholes.

Further OT, but there is quite a lot of private equity these days in fusion research. Much of it doesn't get talked about too much, but Tokamak Energy (over at Culham near Oxford IIRC) are quite good with occasional video updates on their spheroidal tokamak project, eg:

Target was 10^8°K by end of 2018. Deadline getting a bit close now so doubt they'll make that, but nonetheless they seem to be making decent progress.

 

[Tophe74]

Yes frenches are protesting to be able to continue buying diesel so they can still polute... Crasy country.
Only wallet mater's. No care of our child's future.

 

[emgf]

It is more complicated than that since the french governments for the last 30 years have pushed people to buy diesel cars and suddenly changed
that policy by over taxing diesel

 

[Tophe74]

Am French and I never bought diesel cause I knew it emitts but particles. So if the government said we have to buy shit and its good for us we ll buy it ?
No need to be smart to see that a black stinking smoke is not good. Furthermore ppl bought diesel despites the fact that they are more expensive to buy and maintain.So less expensive because of cheaper gasoil but only if u do more than 20k km/year ... So a bit easy to say it's governement fault ...

 

[Dtrawford]

Truth is our government did the sam encouragement to buy diesel vehicles. Now as we all know diesel more expensive than petrol.
Even us having to pay a road tax on our EV's over £40k