{"id":24107,"date":"2019-09-07T14:03:45","date_gmt":"2019-09-07T12:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/?p=24107"},"modified":"2021-12-01T13:49:50","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T12:49:50","slug":"bigger-is-not-better-how-suvs-are-killing-the-climate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/story\/24107\/bigger-is-not-better-how-suvs-are-killing-the-climate\/","title":{"rendered":"Bigger is not better – how SUVs are killing the climate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The car industry wants you to buy a big car. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

Even if you don\u2019t buy a Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV), your options for a \u2018small car\u2019 are disappearing as cars get bigger, and this is a huge problem. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

\"Protest
Activists protesting the arrival of several hundred climate-unfriendly BMW SUVs to Bremerhaven in Germany.
\u00a9 Chris Grodotzki \/ Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

So, on the 7th September, 35 activists from Greenpeace Germany took action. They protested on the loading ramp of a ship importing thousands of SUVs into Europe. Along its side, they unfurled a banner reading \u2018climate killers on board\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

They did this because we are in a climate crisis. And we didn\u2019t get here by accident. We got here because reckless companies, including those in the car industry, put profits before a liveable planet. It\u2019s vital that we hold them responsible for what they are doing. We need to dramatically reduce our emissions across all sectors, and that includes our cars. But car companies are taking us backwards. They are making cars bigger, and promoting the heaviest ones. It\u2019s a disaster.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Big bets on big cars<\/b><\/p>\n\n

Car companies are investing heavily in SUVs, launching new models all the time. Volkswagen are rolling out <\/span>16 new models before 2020<\/span><\/a>. They\u2019re also spending heavily on publicity to make sure we buy them. Unpublished Greenpeace analysis of Nielsen Media data indicates that SUVs are more heavily advertised than any other car types.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

And for the car industry, all this investment is paying off; around the world, sales of SUVs are booming. By 2025, <\/span>40% of all new cars sold globally<\/span><\/a> could be SUVs.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\"Protest
These vehicles are significantly more climate-damaging than other cars due to their heavy weight and large engines.
\u00a9 Chris Grodotzki \/ Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

What we are witnessing is a \u2018SUVization\u2019 of the model ranges being offered.  Even iconic small cars from bygone eras, like the Fiat 500 or the Mini, are now available as SUVs. Large cars are proving increasingly hard to avoid. And that is very bad news.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

More weight, more emissions<\/b><\/p>\n\n

The average car in Germany was 77kg heavier in 2018 than it was in 2008. This matters, because the heavier a car is, the more energy it needs to move around. For most cars, this means burning more carbon emissions.  And don\u2019t be fooled by SUVs powered by electricity; with a much larger battery than its smaller counterpart, emissions jump during production. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

 <\/span>A Volkswagen Golf weighs over <\/span>two thirds more than it did 40 years ago<\/span><\/a>.  Some of this weight increase stems from new safety features but as a result, it is estimated to emit <\/span>57% more carbon<\/span><\/a> for petrol models. To put that another way, if all Golfs had stayed as light as before, with improvement in technology,  their average CO2 emissions would be around half of what they are today. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

But by modern standards, a Golf isn\u2019t even that big. A VW Tiguan \u2014 essentially an SUV version of the Golf \u2014 is 200kg heavier. That\u2019s the same weight as <\/span>two giant pandas<\/span><\/a>, only nowhere near as cuddly. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

\"VW
A VW Golf
\u00a9 Fred Dott \/ Greenpeace<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

The car industry has become truly grotesque. A Volkwagen from the 80s would look like a toy compared to what\u2019s on the roads today. It would be funny if it wasn\u2019t so serious. But the choices that the car industry made have dire implications for all of us. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

It\u2019s not just climate<\/b><\/p>\n\n

The problems with SUVs don\u2019t stop with climate. Because of their height and weight, you\u2019re more likely to die if you\u2019re in an accident involving an SUV, if you\u2019re on foot<\/span> or in another car<\/span><\/a> . This is compounded by the fact that SUV drivers are less likely to obey the rules of the road and more likely to take risks while driving.<\/span>  <\/span><\/p>\n\n

The car manufacturers profit-driven supersizing is threatening us all. They have to change direction. The Paris agreement commits nations to preventing more than 1.5 degrees of warming, but none of the large car manufacturers have a plan to honour that. Almost all of them are committed to selling petrol and diesel cars for the foreseeable future and by making cars bigger, they\u2019re just making things worse. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

This is reckless. They are profiting at our expense.  <\/span><\/p>\n\n

\"Cars
Rush hour in Beijing
\u00a9 Greenpeace \/ Natalie Behring<\/div><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

But the path towards sustainability is clear. They need to stop developing models that run on petrol and diesel and make the switch entirely to electric vehicles. And all cars need to be much smaller. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

And that\u2019s just the start. We need fewer cars on the road and that means car manufacturers need to stop promoting private ownership of cars. Cars should be shared, not individually owned. Together, we need to work towards a sustainable transport future – of more public transport, more walking and cycling, and fewer cars.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Around the world, thousands of people have signed an open letter calling on those responsible for the climate crisis to clean up their act. <\/span>Please join them<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

Andrew Tobert is a digital campaigner with the Clean Air Now campaign<\/em><\/p>\n\n

\n\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Ediriweera Desapriya u.a. (2010) Do light truck vehicles (LTV) impose greater risk of pedestrian injury than passenger cars? A meta-analysis and systematic review, in: Traffic Injury Prevention, 11\/2010, S. 48-56.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n\n

Wallner, Peter; Wanka, Anna; Huttler, Hans-Peter (2017) SUV driving \u2018masculinizes\u2019 risk behavior in females: a public health challenge, in Wiener klinische Wochenschrift, Jg. 129, Nr. 17, S. 625 – 629.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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We are in a climate crisis. And we didn\u2019t get here by accident. We got here because reckless companies put profits before a liveable planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":24109,"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":[87],"p4-page-type":[59],"class_list":["post-24107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-oil","p4-page-type-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24107","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\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24107"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51207,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24107\/revisions\/51207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24107"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/international\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=24107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}