Marketplace Market expert Russ Smith’s roundup of the latest ups and downs.

Iam far from being a climate change denier – governments across the world really must make some meaningful changes or we’re all in trouble. But I do object to the amount of blame that is heaped on car drivers, with threats to force fossil fuel-driven cars off the road by whatever fanciful date each political party chooses to offer up. I’ve also noticed a growing amount of negativity being aimed at older cars.

Apart from it not being that simple, there are other bigger issues that will still be there if we all threw our keys away tomorrow. For fun, to highlight this I ran calculator over some easily found data. There are according, to the FBHVC, around 500,000 classic cars registered in the UK. Let’s be generous and say 60 per cent of those are on the road and allow an average of 24mpg and 1500 miles a year. That would consume a total of 18.75million gallons which, which sounds like a lot.

But. There are around 7500 flights a day from UK airports, and no one’s proposing to stop or even reduce those. Again, for average purposes, lets take the Boeing 737. Just taking off and getting up to height, each 737 flight consumes 750 gallons, I assume creating roughly similar amounts of CO2 per gallon burnt. Which means it takes just three days for aviation to chuck out the same as classics do in a year. There is also as yet no solution to the many big trucks charging up and down our roads using diesel at a rate of 5mpg laden and 9mpg empty. Still feeling guilty? I thought not. And don’t get me started on electric-powered ‘classics’. £100k battery-powered Minis are really no solution to any sensible question.

‘Aviation takes 3 days to burn what classics use in a year’

Russ Smith has been following the classic car market for more than two decades and contributes to Practical Classics, Classic Car Weekly and Classic Cars.