{"id":23992,"date":"2019-08-28T11:19:24","date_gmt":"2019-08-28T09:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/?p=23992"},"modified":"2020-03-08T15:59:37","modified_gmt":"2020-03-08T14:59:37","slug":"how-car-companies-are-speeding-us-towards-a-climate-crash-and-what-we-can-do-to-stop-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/story\/23992\/how-car-companies-are-speeding-us-towards-a-climate-crash-and-what-we-can-do-to-stop-them\/","title":{"rendered":"How car companies are speeding us towards a climate crash (and what we can do to stop them)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s scary to think that while we are living in a climate emergency, CO2 emissions \u2014 a greenhouse gas driving global climate change  \u2014 continues to rise each and every month<\/a>. The transport sector is responsible for about a quarter of those global emissions. Road transport \u2014 which consists of cars, trucks and buses \u2014 accounts for a whopping 74 percent of global transport CO2 emissions.<\/a> <\/strong>In fact, in most places, transport is extremely problematic. <\/strong>Houston, we have a problem.<\/p>\n\n

\"\u00a9
Smog from air pollution appears in the sky above a business district in Jakarta.
\u00a9 Jurnasyanto Sukarno \/ Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

It\u2019s time we get real about the problem with cars. The world is addicted to cars and the car industry is only too happy to keep us hooked for the long run.  In 2018 alone, more than 86 million new cars<\/a> were produced, with soaring demand for larger, heavier vehicles (like SUVs ) which produce even more emissions being spewed into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n

Let\u2019s think about the environment for a moment in terms of a house that is flooding. Say you left the water running in the bath and it overflowed, filling up your home with water, your first reaction probably wouldn\u2019t be to grab a bucket and start hauling the water out \u2014 it would be to turn the tap off<\/em>.  While emissions from cars are flooding the atmosphere, one of the surest ways we\u2019re going to avert a climate catastrophe is to stop putting more diesel and petrol cars on the road ASAP.<\/p>\n\n

Who is causing the problem? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Car companies \u2014 like the oil and gas industry \u2014 have for decades known exactly how to sell us the dream happiness and personal freedom. As the world becomes increasingly invested in tackling the climate emergency, the car industry certainly wants us to think that they are part of the solution, not the problem. We see ads for cleaner engines, with names like BlueMotion<\/em>, or SkyActiv<\/em> that hint warmly at a lighter, greener future \u2014 and everywhere there is the magic word: \u2018hybrid\u2019.<\/p>\n\n

While this is great marketing, in truth, <\/strong>the car industry has ramped up sales on more and bigger diesel and petrol vehicles \u2014 far from the green technology we were promised in commercials.<\/p>\n\n

To bring transport emissions down, we need to rapidly phase out internal combustion engine cars. Most governments, with a few notable exceptions<\/a>, are not regulating this effectively. At the moment the car industry seems unwilling to do it on its own. Their desperate need to protect and grow their enormous profits is not only dragging us backwards, but is also not in line with what most people actually want. Instead of moving towards a sustainable business model of producing smaller and shared vehicles powered by renewables, the industry continues to push big outdated cars that rely solely on fossil fuels.<\/p>\n\n

\"A
Air pollution cutouts appear around the country as the UK broke 2018’s annual air pollution limits only 30 days into the year.
\u00a9 Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

If the cost of diesel and petrol \u2014 and the vehicles that burn it \u2014 actually<\/em> reflected the health issues they cause and environmental damage they inflict through the increase of severe storms and wildfires, rising sea levels and extensive heat waves, polluting car as we know it would have been extinct ages ago<\/em>. With that in mind, <\/strong>the continued production of diesel and petrol cars is, in a word, ludicrous.<\/p>\n\n

So what do we do now?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

We want to send a message loud and clear to automakers that they are holding us back from the positive change we desperately need by restricting people’s freedom to choose cleaner cars and greener ways of travelling. We couldn\u2019t think of a better place to demand change than at the Frankfurt Motor Show<\/a> in September \u2014 the largest car show in the world. The industry movers and shakers will be there and this year, they\u2019ll be met by thousands of protesters, including Greenpeace. Together with people across Europe, we\u2019ll be calling on them to do better, to embrace a climate-friendly future, and to stop holding us back.<\/p>\n\n

Cars don\u2019t need to disappear, but they must be very different. Car companies must offer new methods of transport that don\u2019t harm our health or our planet. They must contribute to new ways of getting around town without relying on private cars. We really need  public transport that\u2019s affordable, convenient and accessible; safe walking and cycling routes \u2014 and more of them; and if there are journeys where we need a car, there should be fleets of renewably powered electric vehicles available that we all share.<\/p>\n\n

The car companies have not matched the scale of ambition required. At least, not yet. But together, we can push them to get there.<\/p>\n\n

Want to join us and share what happens in Frankfurt? Follow People vs Oil on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a> for all the latest information!<\/p>\n\n

Lauren Reid is the Clean Air Now international comms lead with Greenpeace Belgium<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Car companies must offer new methods of transport that don\u2019t harm our health or our planet.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":22222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_planet4_optimize_post_is_variant":false,"_planet4_optimize_experiment_name":"","_planet4_optimize_variant_name":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[65],"p4-page-type":[59],"class_list":["post-23992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-energy-revolution","p4-page-type-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23992"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29225,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23992\/revisions\/29225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23992"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=23992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}