Car industry launches absurd 'decarb' climate plan to reduce emissions
Leading Australian lobby group, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries, has solved the thorny problem of climate change. All it took was a buzzword. If only it was that easy to reduce emissions…
Australia’s leading lobby group has solved the thorny problem of climate change.
All it took was a buzzword generator and a one-page downloadable PDF.
All new cars come with filthy, stinking carbon emissions embodied in their manufacture, which nobody wants to acknowledge - carmakers, their respective lobby groups, governments, green groups or even the media (mostly because they wouldn’t understand such complex ideas.
The car industry is BUSTED: Breaking down car industry's dodgy CO2 and climate claims >>
Why don’t they acknowledge this? Mainly because facts are so inconvenient.
But have no fear. Just like how the Australian automotive industry finally agrees on more electric vehicles, again car industry has solved it. Listen up, Albo, Chris Bowen, Adam Bandt and the ‘Teal’ independents. Are you ready?
On hearing that, I was on the edge of rejoicing. We can now defund the CSIRO, Greenpeace has just gone bust, and look out, ARENA.
Here comes the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries.
Move over, Sir David Attenborough. There’s a new Captain Planet in town, and its name is the FCAI.
The power of the buzzword, ‘Decarbonised’ is immense. Unstoppable, even. Imagine rehydrating our way to a greener future with ‘VB Decarb’.
Let’s just decarb’ the shit out of the vehicle fleet. Why did I not think of that? It would, of course, mean making cars without steel, or tyres, or plastics, or glass, or circuit boards, or textiles. There’s that. Also, we wouldn’t be able to ship them from the factory to Australia because: bunker fuel oil.
But these are, of course, just details, to a lobby group’s vision, such as the FCAI, which is also suspected of being a front for a Toyota PR-laundering operation in Canberra. Membership and advocacy is, after all, biased in favour of sales volumes.
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CLIMATE VERSUS CAR INDUSTRY. ROUND 1 - FIGHT!
It’s truly astounding, how much information spews from the FCAI’s public relations apparatus.
As opposed to relations with China, or knock-on effects of Vlad in Ukraine, or inflation, cost of living, pandemic preparedness, defence, etc.
According to a survey by the Lowy Institute in 2016, education was the number-one issue facing the nation. Followed by health, domestic violence, the economy, terrorism and national security, dysfunctional politics, refugees and asylum seekers, and only then climate change (in eighth spot). Followed by immigration and China.
I don’t know who suddenly made the FCAI the arbiter of Australia's challenge hierarchy.
Solid. I like it. Let’s de-impedimentize things in the Reverso-tronic machine. Brilliant. In with the CO2, out with the decarb. Lateral thinking.
Only, at this point I’d respectfully suggest that the whole FCAI Decarb plan is starting to smell less like virtuous planet-saving, and more like a disingenuous bullshit pitch to get the new Federal Government to spend money only in ways which will increase the sale of new cars. Mainly Toyotas.
Surely he’s not suggesting that the human race’s salvation hinges on consuming even more cars? Because I don’t see how the road to getting CO2 under control is paved with even more consumption of anything.
While we’re on the subject, here’s The truth about how much our cars really emit - and taking real climate action >>
Pray tell, therefore, what exactly are these three magic points, FCAI dudes?
Really? Agree on the destination. Remove the roadblocks. Go the distance.
Climate change: solved.
Finally, there’s no need for you to imagine any longer what it would be like to watch tennis being played without the net.
This is the kind of incredible thing that happens when an organisation is unencumbered by the facts.
Destination.
Roadblocks.
Go the distance.
Wow.
Are we saving the planet or hitching up the caravan and taking our effluent to Dingo Piss Creek in our fucking Hilux? Because it’s exactly the same three-point plan for both missions.
It’s hard to see a decarb’ Hilux, ever, isn’t it? Man just wants to sit next to his Tiffany in his diesel Hilux, drive endlessly through busted-arse cattle scrub, past all those Rangers, which have pooped in their trousers en route.
There is an category of Australian who just wants to park his camper on the shore of the Golden Billabong, drink beer and stare at a campfire.
Except there’s no suggestion of any decarb vehicle approaching production that could actually tow a Taj Mahal to The Creek, nor be used daily by tradies, etc. Electric cars are just for people in Pleasantville. From their apartment in the inner city to their vital job as the senior VP of marketing for Polymer Dogtoy Industries.
Three points. Nine sub-points. Vehicle emissions solved. Just like that. Feel free to download the full ‘FCAI Decarb press release for yourself, but allow me to take a cognitive load off.
The nine points are: Sell more new cars, sell more new cars, and sell more new cars, repeat.
But there is one bullshit statement there, which begs for repudiation:
Allow me to correct the record here: Australia is full of bugger all. Jam-packed with nothing. We’re all stocked up on inhospitable desolation. Mad Max showed just the best bits.
Most of Australia is empty, for good reason. Which is why nobody ever goes there, statistically. This is an objective truth.
There’s a big rock in the middle and a whole bunch of animals that will kill you, mainly around the edges, and in the water. One of our capital cities is a living cemetery, Sydney is a monument to human ugliness, the Gold Coast to the Sunshine Coast is Sodom and Gommorah by the sea, and everything else is a complete cultural void. Perth’s okay, as long as you don’t die trying to get there.
According to facts - in this case the Bureau of Statistics’ Survey of Motor Vehicle Use, 2020 - passenger vehicles here drove a total of 163 billion kilometres in 2020. Of those, 125 billion kays was driven in capital cities and urban areas. We therefore drove the equivalent of 12.5 return trips to Pluto in cities and urban areas.
That’s 77 per cent of our proud, desolate, Shitsvillian driving, in cities and urban areas.
In the Disunited States of America, which is about the same size as Australia, but not empty, 70 per cent of travel is in cities and urban areas. Australia, 77; USA, 70.
We don’t drive “greater distances more often”. That’s bullshit. Americans spend more time, per vehicle, on the Interstate than we do.
US data there from the University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems, Personal Transportation Factsheet. You can find that data here >>.
This jingoistic concept that we are a nation of post-apocalyptic Mad-Maxian long-distance drivers is objectively a Himalaya of horseshit. Because of the staggering inhospitable nature of the majority of our land mass (and our smaller population), we do less driving through it than, for example, Americans.
We are one of the most highly urbanised driving cultures in the developed world.
This three-point plan is abject lobby-land bullshit.
How ordinary people & politicians can reduce transport emissions
Since when did a lobby group actually gives a fuck about climate change? Personal opinion.
Here’s how you reduce your car’s CO2 emissions (the ‘no bullshit’ approach):
You make public transport free, and not shit.
You try to live closer to work.
You work from home if you can.
If you’ve got a bunch of errands to run today, try to do them all (or as many of them as you feasibly can) back-to-back. Chain them up into a sequence, rather than making a series of individual ‘to and fro home’ outings.
And:
You drive as if the accelerator is connected to a tap, which empties the fuel tank - because that’s exactly what it is.
Squeeze gently on takeoff. Try to maintain a nice, constant travel speed in free-flowing conditions. Lift off, and close the tap early when the traffic ahead is stopping or slowing, and let momentum do the work.
You can do this today - except making mass transit free and not shit. That would require the second coming of Jesus … only not in Missouri, obviously.
Because, in NSW, senior political dipshits - the ruling elite - are far too busy jumping from one scandal to the next to bother with trivialities such as actually fixing the public transport system, or making personal electric mobility scooters legal.
Building proper cycleways to make low-impact commuting a real, viable proposition. Getting bicycles out of the way of cars - improving safety, efficiency, and minimising animosity there.
NSW politicians: Too busy fumbling the pin on this grenade and the next one, because they’ve lost sight of what they were elected to do; serve the damn public, not rule it.
Every scooter, every bicycle, every pedestrian, every skateboard … that’s a car not gumming up the roads and farting into the air you’re breathing right now. Every bus is about 50 cars. Every train is hundreds of cars - not gridlocking the road at the end of your street.
All these carbon-cutting points are within our grasp today. No bullshit ‘decarb’ plan required. Even public transport could be fixed - just not by elected washed-up lawyers and arsehole lobbyists.
But these effective measures won’t actually sell more new cars. You can do most of them in your current shitbox, today, and make a real difference. Which is of course why they’re not to be found anywhere on the FCAI’s bullshit three-point ‘decarb’ plan.
Toyota RAV4 is the best-selling medium SUV in Australia, offering good resale value and envious fuel economy. If you need an enormous boot and a simple, functional family vehicle, RAV4 is hard to beat.