Women must stop admiring men who drive sports cars if they want to join the fight against global warming, the Government's chief scientist has urged.

Professor Sir David King said governments could only do so much to control greenhouse gas emissions and it was time for a cultural change among the British public. And he singled out women who find supercar drivers "sexy", adding that they should divert their affections to men who live more environmentally-friendly lives.

His comments were greeted with anger by sports car drivers who insisted that their vehicles' greenhouse gas emissions were tiny compared with those from four-wheel-drive vehicles.

Sir David, who is due to retire as the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser at the end of the year, said individuals needed to change their behaviour.

"I was asked at a lecture by a young woman about what she could do and I told her to stop admiring young men in Ferraris," he said.

By all means, if you're going to get all hot and bothered, at least have the decency to choose a man driving decent car. The Ferrari is a clunker. It's uncomfortable, and features the handling characteristics of a horse and buggy.

Might I suggest either the Dodge Stealth or Nissan 300ZX? At least your carbon footprint will look fantastic.

Seriously, has it come to this? Is government now trying to alter the laws of nature by encouraging beautiful young women to not turn their heads as some paunchy, middle aged married guy drives by in an MG? Is Big Brother actually going to start acting like a big brother and try and regulate our little sister's sex lives?
 
This is government interfering in the established order of the universe while trying to alter human evolution. It is unnatural and must be stopped. Before you know it, women will be preferring less horse power and more eco-power. What that will do to the species is anyone's guess.

I wonder what kind of car that scientist drives?

Update: Thomas Lifson adds:

We have seen campaigns to change the nature of sexual attraction before. Communist states offered their idealized "new socialist man" as sex symbols for the ladies and role models for the guys. But goody-two-shoes males are far less attractive to adolescent girls than rebels, and most guys want to be attractive to the ladies. It is biological.

For much of the 1970s, Alan Alda was offered as the epitome of the "new male" attractive to feminists. Plenty of guys tried it out, and it worked for those feminists of the bra-burning, free love sort. But it had no staying power whatsoever, as the feminists moved on in grimmer, angrier, less heterosexual  directions. Germaine Greer, with her widely-publicized feminist taste for rough-hewn blue collar guys, helped torpedo this brief era of the anodyne male as sex symbol.

The Vietnam War era poster captioned "Girls Say Yes to Boys Who Say No" had much more success, because rebellion is cool, at least to adolescents and young adults whose developmental stage means separating from their parents.

But in the end, it is the soldier, the man of action, the protector, the hero, who rules as sex symbol. Ever has it been, and so will it ever be. There is no need to get Freudian about cars, guns, and other supposed phallic symbols. It's the testosterone, stupid.