It's a question that's bothered me right from the start, and to a large extent the answer lies in the hands of EU, who are debating the cars issue now.

I've never been interested in cars, not in the way some people I know. But though I haven't owned a car for over ten years, I'm not completely on another planet, and I know all too well that for a lot of people a car isn't just a method of getting from A to B. For some, the relationship with their cars is a lot more complex than that.

There's an interesting article on the Guardian environment blog that sums it up nicely.

"…the car is a fearfully clever thing, a powerful mechanical servant which can transport us anywhere we want to go, while carrying tents and ovens and picnics and even playing your favourite music."

But the trouble is that all that self-reliance comes with a price tag. And I'm not talking about the cost of getting the thing on the road - the price we're paying for our love affair with the combustion engine is so much higher. And the problem is it's a delayed reaction, an invisible one so it's easy to ignore the cause and effect.

I wonder how people would feel if they could see the damage they cause to our world every time they revved the engine? If instead of car ads showing rolling hills with cars gliding quietly past, car makers were more honest, and we saw plants wilting or rivers bursting their banks with each puff from the exhaust.

If we could see the effects of our own CO2 emissions would we love the car less?

The BBC programme Top Gear epitomises some people's obsession with the combustion engine, with its laddish talk and love of fast cars. So last night I was surprised to catch a repeat of a programme by a Top Gear presenter, on energy, in the last part of the James May's Big Ideas series.

The programme looked at a number of options including a solar powered racing car and a plan to develop petrol out of thin air. Yes really. The idea is to use solar polar to convert CO2 and water into something like petrol. There's a youtube video of the clip here if you're interested.

Before you get too excited about that particular idea, there are a number of problems with it that are explained quite well here in the comments.

But the main problem I can have with it is that it involved burning coal to produce the CO2 in the first place. Creating emissions to clean up emissions doesn't sound like a solution to me.

But what interested me more is that if a high profile TV presenter who loves to drive fast cars is concerned about CO2 emissions, then why aren't the car makers falling over themselves to do something about it?

Make us more efficient cars and we'll drive more efficient cars. It's a message we’re sending to the EU right now, because the car industry just doesn't seem to want to hear it.