This sounds straight out of 1984...
A scary yet not surprising recent report details how the European Union is right now considering monitoring vehicle emissions in real time. It’s being considered as part of the upcoming Euro 7 emission standards and the end result would be the further erosion of personal freedom.
Read about the interesting emissions changes some lawmakers want to make in Nevada right here.
For example, as government bureaucrats in Europe are monitoring your hybrid’s emissions, they might declare that the area where you’re driving has too much air pollution. This move would allow them to remotely force your vehicle to drive in electric-only mode, because as we know all electricity in European grids comes from the breeze and sun rays, not any kind of combustive process involving fossil fuels.
Now, before anyone says I’m positioning this as something which is definitely happening, I’m not. They’re just being tossed around for now. Completed proposals for Euro 7 rules are supposed to be submitted to European parliament at the end of this year, so there’s still plenty of time for them to dream up more totalitarian ways to ensure you don’t use your car in any way those in power deem as unacceptable. Most likely, all the new Euro 7 emissions standards will be put into effect in 2025, giving people plenty of time to move to China for greater personal freedom.
There is a glimmer of hope since the EU government is looking at 3 different approaches for Euro 7. The first and most sane pathway would do a light revision to Euro 6. The second involves more aggressive revisions, including a tightening up standards for CO2 and NOx limits. It would also involve new tests and limits on “non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions.”
Option 3, which sounds full-on crazy controlling, means all cars undergo “real-world emission monitoring over the entire lifetime” of the car. Part of the point is to make sure nobody is tampering with the emissions systems on their vehicle. Plus, authorities would know right away if your car is polluting more than the legal limit, so it would be like you’re always doing a smog test.
Before you get all worked up over the Big Brother nature of the third pathway, supposedly all information will be collected anonymously. Right, I believe that just like I believed the guy who sold me the bridge in Iraq. Surely this will never be used to track down offenders, since the proposal even talks about it being a useful tool to “ensure compliance.” Modify the vehicle you own in the wrong way and you’ll wake up to agents with guns drawn in your bedroom. Yay for freedom!
Big, powerful governments are great until they’re not, especially when they start manipulating tiny aspects of your life. Sure, they’ll position it as they’re keeping you safe from some big, scary thing, but the honest truth is some people just love controlling everyone else. In my view that’s exactly what this move by the EU is all about: power and control, not “saving the planet” or whatever other excuse they conjure up. And the more ground you give up to these bureaucrats, the more they’ll keep taking because you let them.
While Europeans might be readily surrendering their rights, those of us in North America need to be on high alert. Don’t think for a moment there aren’t people getting the idea to push for similar legislation here, but they’ll do it using the “salami slicing” method so beautifully deployed by the EU. Boy, did England just dodge a bullet with Brexit? Or are they willing to run off the same cliff to look fashionable?
Source: Auto Express
