Traffic Jam: Activists Bring Range Rover Production to a Halt

The volunteers used safety shut-down buttons to cut off power to the assembly line before handcuffing and chaining themselves to unfinished vehicles along the 500 foot long assembly line and branding it a "climate crime scene." It's the first time anywhere in the world that protesters have shut down a factory making Sports Utility Vehicles.

Global warming is the greatest threat the planet is facing and 40 percent of the oil burned in the United States is for transportation use. According to the World Health Organization, 150,000 people are already dying every year as a result of the impacts of climate change including droughts, floods and storms.  In spite of this, President Bush decided in 2001 to withdraw the United States from the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty that aims to curb global warming.

We have not shut down production of the Land Rover Defender, most of which are used for legitimate agricultural and industrial purposes.  However, according to the U.S. EPA, Ford cars and trucks have had the worst average fuel economy of all the major automakers for the last five years in a row, averaging at just 15.7 miles per gallon. The most egregious example is the Range Rover SUV, which gets as little as 12 miles per gallon in urban areas.  The new Range Rover Sport, which "has been tuned primarily for on-road performance," does fewer miles to the gallon than the Model T Ford built 80 years ago.

Making cars like this for urban use is crazy, especially when most SUVs will tackle nothing steeper than a speed bump. More than 18 million Americans live in cities that exceed current federal health guidelines for air quality. This pollution disproportionately effects America's children, elderly, low-income families and people of color much as the devastating impacts of global warming do.

Greenpeace UK Executive Director Stephen Tindale is one of the volunteers currently chained to Range Rover chassis. He said, "We've taken direct action to stop Land Rover making these gas-guzzling urban 4x4s. The company used to have a reputation for making working vehicles, but now they market themselves as the car company for people who love the wilderness while simultaneously producing cars that threaten our environment with catastrophic climate change."

Range Rover's parent company, Ford, is losing money and shedding jobs in America because sales of their gas-guzzling models are falling, whereas Asian companies are thriving by making fuel efficient vehicles. With a climate crisis developing and oil at over $US 50 a barrel, car-makers who want to save jobs have to stop making gas guzzlers.

There's no future and no jobs in making cars that wreck the climate. Land Rover and Ford have the technology to develop far more fuel-efficient vehicles but they choose not to. It's time for Land Rover to stop making gas-guzzlers and protect the wilderness it habitually advertises.