Green car website reported recently on a growing number of carmakers in the UK that have managed to achieve lower car emissions this year.

Taking European firms that will be covered by the EU proposals, BMW, Mini (owned by BMW), Volvo (owned by Ford), Audi (owned by VW) and Peugeot have all managed to get their emissions going in the right direction. One European firm (strictly speaking they are owned by Tata, so they are Indian) Land Rover's emissions actually went up by a small margin.

Though none of the car makers hit the proposed 2012 emissions targets, not yet anyway, some of the reductions are pretty impressive. They range from a reduction of 19.95g per km from German giant BMW to a slim 6.99 g per km from Peugeot that, with an average of 140.28, has almost the lowest emissions in this bunch. If Peugeot manages to shave off an additional 0.28g per km by the end of the year it could reach the voluntary target set by ACEA in 1997 of 140g per km. And if it can do it in the UK, there's no reason why the target can't be reached across Europe as a whole.

The average cut in CO2 emissions across these manufacturers works out at 13.46g per km and it just goes to show that if they put their mind to it, 120g per km by 2012 is achievable.

I hate to say it but we did tell you so. So I hope the car industry is listening - we said that you can do it, and now even you have to got to admit that you can.

But whatever way you look at it, isn't it disgraceful that only one manufacturer has come anywhere near meeting ACEA's own target of 140g per km by 2008? If you ask me, it's more than a disgrace, it's scandalous. They set the target themselves, they decided how much they could reduce CO2 emissions in their own industry and they gave themselves10 years to do it.

If instead of a voluntary agreement in 1997 the target had been made law, they wouldn't be able to get away with failing to meet it. And if the target of 140 g per km had been met, there would be no excuse for failing to bring CO2 levels down further in 2012, and by 2020 we could have been looking at something much more ambitious than 95g per km.

But thanks to the car industry's failure to take action, and pleas that they need more time, they could keep on getting away with doing nothing until 2012.

We have to make sure that doesn't happen.