Having just returned from America after visiting the west coast and Hawaii I report on the following: The main street garages do not sell diesel. I saw or heard no diesel cars. The Nissan Micra K13 is about equivalent to £5000 but no one buys it. So far last year Fiat's sales drive bombed with only about six hundred 500s sold. They haven’t sold one 500 on Hawaii. Everything still has big engines and the airport bus shuttles don’t even turn the engines off when loading or unloading.

Petrol (‘gas’) is around 2.90 dollars a US gallon. A lot of cars are sold in outlets in shopping malls. We thought having a Ford dealer opposite a Tiffany’s shop was funny. TV ads show the car and finance deal and then a HWY (highway) mpg pops up. Best was an Acura at 36mpg (and that’s smaller US gallons). Overall, I got the impression that even in San Francisco no one was interested in saving the planet. In Las Vegas every other car was a Cadillac Escalade or Dodge Ram truck and everyone was just wasting resources. Sometime I wonder why we bother.