Is the Sexy Green Car Show really Green?

The Sexy Green Car Show is currently at the Eden Project - there is also the SolaRola electric vehicle cavalcade arriving from London at the Bath & West Show on the 28th May. Is this an opportunity for us Greens and our Euro candidates to don our bikinis and more for the photoshoots draped across the bonnets of "Sexy Green Cars"?

I am all for shaming the polluters - Friends of the Earth (FoE) recently unveiled research showing that most car adverts are for "dirty" vehicles with big engines and fast acceleration: in a two-week period some 55 per cent of adverts in national newspapers were for cars in the most polluting bands E to G, which emit more than 165 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre.

FoE said the survey called into question the motor industry's insistence that they are producing greener cars, "but motorists don't buy them".

As noted on this blog before car makers are campaigning against EU plans to introduce mandatory targets to cut emissions for new vehicles. The objective has already been watered down, but the industry says even the weaker target is too tough. It was little wonder the car industry has failed to meet its voluntary target for selling more fuel-efficient vehicles - as FoE have pointed out, they should spend less time and money lobbying against targets to cut carbon emissions from its products and more time and money into building and promoting greener cars.

Infact when it comes to these seemingly fun techy solutions Greens are party-poopers. Our manifesto says in no uncertain terms that demand management and modal shift are the principal ways of reducing carbon dioxide from transport (and an honourable mention should be given to the 55mph speed limit). The manifesto rather turns its nose up at electric vehicles and alternative fuels.

Indeed we have seen in the press recently that hybrid cars have come under more mainstream criticism for being overly expensive for the minor fuel-efficiency gains they sometimes achieve. I am told of a Devon Green who commutes to work and says she gets significantly more mpg from her normal diesel car than a colleague does from her hybrid.

As the final nail in the coffin for sexy new green cars, I recall reading that it is more environmentally friendly to continue to run old diesel cars until they drop than to pay to have new cars manufactured, due to all the embodied energy they represent, equivalent to many years of carbon debt.

Maybe individual vehicle emissions can reduce by 80% in 42 years as suggested by this exhibition - but this is not anything like sufficient - and at the same time car companies are exploiting huge markets in Asia and South America, plus pushing to ensure car transport is the only option for travel in the industrial West. Net transport emissions are unlikely to go down at all, regardless of how “green” individual vehicles are. Let us not forget this is a trade event, designed to make car manufacturers look good, while still continuing their effortless plundering of the planet’s diminishing natural assets. As the South Coast Indymedia said: "Eden Project, you have well and truly been taken for a ride."

Having said that I think there's a bright future for a modest amount of small electric vehicles with low speed capabilities, but we really need to be generating all of our electricity renewably as well, which will take many decades without a green government to intervene. The manifesto's transport chapter is understandably sceptical about this happening any time soon, hence the dismissiveness of electric cars.

See recent comment re eco-criminals Porsche here.