Why the people who run the automotive industry should be tried for crimes against humanity

Enrique Dans

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Enrique Dans

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3 min read

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3 days ago

IMAGE: Khunkorn Laowisit — Pexels

Two news items this week illustrate the automotive industry’s total regard for the health of the planet, and the people living on it, in its determination to keep selling its fossil fuel-powered junk.

The car lobby has successfully pressured the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, to delay the ban on the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030 to 2035. A ban that was crucial to achieving the emissions reductions needed to meet the Paris Agreement targets.

Cars are responsible for a large part of the emissions that have created the climate emergency, and what’s more, they create the most contamination in cities, which are essentially traps that poison their inhabitants. Recent research published by the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago shows that simply breathing the polluted air of cities has a more pernicious effect on life expectancy than smoking.

This week also saw the automotive industry succeed in getting the European Union to lower the emission reduction requirements for vehicles, delaying by two years the entry into force of new conditions (the so-called Euro 7 standard) for the emission of polluting gases. This regulation will not come into force until 2027 in the case of light vehicles and 2029 in the case of heavy vehicles. Considering the average useful life of these cars and trucks, we will continue to suffer the impact of their emissions, both on our lungs and on the planet in general, for many years to come.

Let’s look around us: the number of natural disasters such as cyclones, hurricanes, floods, heat waves and all kinds of extreme weather phenomena is increasing, generating tens of thousands of victims in some countries. Only the most blind try, against all the scientific evidence, to blame other factors, such as chance, in the case of the most naive, to supposedly inevitable issues such as geological or solar drift, in the case of the most ignorant and conspiracy theorists.

The reality, which has the consensus of all relevant scientists in the world, is that we have destabilized the planet’s climate through the emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and others. And in this, the automobile industry plays a…