Sports Calendar

I drive a 15-year-old Range Rover. It is converted to LPG and is greener than many diesel cars. It also takes up less road or car park space than a new Mondeo. It is regularly used to drive off road. Since it was built, the average car user would probably have changed car five times. Is this an environmentally-friendly attitude? Compare how many Land Rovers still exist compared to the base market runabouts. Mike Oliver, Olney, Bucks

"Gas-guzzlers" already pay their fair share of tax through the duty on petrol, which is one of the highest rates in the world. This is not an attack on pollution but an attack on the car itself, going after the easy target, 4x4s first. Why is all the focus on reducing pollution by attacking cars? Meanwhile, aviation remains lightly-taxed and accounts for a rapidly growing proportion of our CO2 emissions, and domestic fuel incurs a lower rate of VAT than other goods and services. Ben Haines, London

The whole of society needs energy to operate. Everything we buy, use, watch, hear, eat, drink and so on. The reason that transport is singled out is because the energy is far more "visual". We see petrol pumps and exhaust pipes. However, to focus CO2 emission purely at transportation is a nonsense. If I buy a product from a developing country, as a way of supporting that economy, then this product has been transported thousands of miles. Steve Roberts, Reading

There is so much focus on 4x4s being bad, with little idea that in most cases they are not at all. The new tax brackets also suggest that there is no incentive not to use them. Both my cars come in at the top bracket, so running my modern sporty hatchback or my old Sierra, or even a petrol-guzzling Range Rover, makes no difference to me. In fact, the biggest deterrent is still the cost of fuel, and this works well because the clean, efficient diesel X5 is more friendly than the 4.8 V8 petrol model, which likely costs twice as much in petrol to run. Government needs to focus on the real problems, not the perceived ones. Four by fours vary in their outputs and efficiency. A supermini hybrid from Japan costs immense amounts of energy to produce and deliver to the UK, and it's actually cleaner to run an older, more fuel-inefficient car for five years than to buy a new one! Name and address withheld

Off we go again, focusing on a single aspect of energy consumption and production, where we ought to be looking at the bigger picture. As a number of people have stated, their six- and seven-seaters actually carry more people than a four-seater, thus reducing the per person/per mile equation. When you factor in the amount of energy involved in construction, surely a bomb-proof 4x4 will outlast a Bacofoil shopping chariot. My own car may not be up there with the "cleaner than it went in" emissions standards of today’s cars, but it passes the MOT, and has been used for 17 years and 172,000 miles. Beat that, Prius owners. Marcus Randle, Blackheath

It is farcical to suggest that 4x4s should be taxed any more than they already are. For a start, how will a 4x4 be defined? A Fiat Panda 4x4 uses a lot less fuel than a supercharged Range Rover. Users of cars with poor fuel economy already pay much more tax than other road users as the majority of the cost of fuel is tax. On the space issue, the footprint of 4x4s is smaller than many large saloons so take up less road space. I should point out I drive a sports car, not a 4x4, but I suspect the government will come after them next. Ben Yeats, Cambridge