Put your foot down
* Drive to extinction
* Accelerate for change
* Floor it
Foot to the floor, as fast as you can. Your Porsche Cayenne is a metal-boxed version of heaven. Some may say you are phallically challenged because you have invested £70,000 on a car that rarely travels more than 40 miles per hour, and that’s on a good day. But you merrily bend the law, knowing that in the process you are helping to exacerbate the meteorological vagaries of climate change. The greens believe that, along with the atomic weapon, the combustion-fired engine is the Devil, but the thrill of speed itself has never murdered anyone; it’s the sudden stopping that hurts. The greens can get on their bikes, so long as they keep to their cycle lanes; you have a fast car to drive.
It’s April 2008, and you are fighting for your right to pollute. Porsche, bless their sleek metallic souls, are dragging the mayor of London to court after he proposed a £25 a day charge (up from £8) to drive the zippiest, sleekest cars around the capital’s centre. Ever willing to help the cause, you log on to their website and pledge your support. The Porsche petition website features a blurred wonder shown whizzing around Parliament Square and is raising online signatures from motor-mouthed people across the planet. At last, you think, a motor manufacturer with the guts to stand up and fight against the bully-boy tactics of the green lobby. In your less reasonable moments, you believe this tax to be the most unfair, unreasonable, and disproportionate levy ever. Your motoring friends claim that, per tonne of extra emissions, this tax is 3,500 times as much as people should be paying. While your Cayenne Turbo is one of the most polluting vehicles around (why else fork out the cash?), with an above-reasonable 605 grams of carbon dioxide released per mile, you suspect the tax is more about squeezing money out of the motorist than saving the planet. The former mayor reckoned that higher charges would trim a pathetic 5,000 tonnes of CO2 each year, with the money raised funding things such as cycling. You note that pollution levels have not changed since the introduction of the congestion speed limit and, as for congestion – well, take a look outside. Recent figures show average traffic speeds in central London are now lower than before the congestion charge was introduced in February 2003. And, with hundreds of cars set to be given free access to the city, there are fears the jams will get worse. London will be packed with cars full of people with limited style and non-existent social skills, and what sort of message is that to be sending from a so-called world city? While they get away scot-free, it will be the richest, the most successful, the most intel-ligent people – those who, frankly, give the city its image – who will be overcharged.
You are furious with the mayor and, in protest, have written a personal letter of solidarity to Wendelin Wiedeking. You have always been a fan of Porsche’s chief executive, who, after all, does earn £55 million per annum and so therefore knows what it takes to be successful and drive decent cars. Wiedeking has said: ‘I recognize that a “fair deal for Porsche owners” is unlikely to be a rallying cry that will see millions marching on the streets of London.’ But he is wrong. Everyone you admire respects Porsche and its heroic fight to try and help you drive high-performance vehicles for as long as you can afford them. Let it not be forgotten that the German car-maker was pivotal in resisting attempts to tackle the car industry’s contribution to climate change. In fact, along with countrymen BMW and Daimler, Porsche was involved in lobbying to reduce and delay Europe’s mandatory targets to reduce carbon emissions from cars. However, despite the painfully predictable evidence presented by scientists, the European Commission listened to the more impressive voice and opted for a blueprint on emissions limits that avoided hurting car-makers more than was necessary.
Back in 1994, a German environment minister advocated a limit of 120 grams per kilometre (about 190 grams per mile) as the maximum amount of carbon dioxide that should be released by the average car. This move would have meant a 3 per cent reduction on emission levels at the time. Almost fifteen years on, it was his country that also led the way in abandoning such ludicrous targets. Despite statements from leading European politicians that the 120-gram threshold was essential, Germany’s car-makers pushed for a lower limit, and the EU’s executive went on to recommend a significantly less ambitious target of 130 grams per kilometre (around 210 grams per mile). Porsche had done it again. It was a landmark victory.
You remember the emotional warnings from German car bosses of vast job losses if they were forced to shed the extra 10g – according to Wiedeking, the guidelines represented an ‘attack’ on the German car industry. No convincing evidence was produced to show that the calamities predicted by scientists were realistic. Thus Wiedeking was able to lambast Europe’s plans as ‘wholly alien’ and to state that they breached the laws of physics. He never mentioned the almost 350 grams per kilometre produced by your beloved Cayenne, because he never had to. He had won. Between 1990 and 2005, a fall in greenhouse-gas emissions was recorded in almost every economic sector in the EU apart from transport, which climbed by more than 30 per cent, with cars and vans accounting for about half that increase. This was also brilliantly glossed over. The industry continued, unfettered, to produce the streamlined machinery that will speed the planet to its fate.
If friends do get hoity-toity about the ethics of becoming speed-freaks in a slow city, then by all means persuade them to get a new eco-car. The very manufacture of a car constitutes a big part of its carbon footprint. Remember when Vauxhall promised to give a £1,000 trade-in for your old banger, regardless of age and condition, in the name of the planet? While it is true that, often, a decrepit, badly maintained vehicle will emit more pollutants from its exhaust pipe than a new vehicle, this ignores a key fact – namely the several tonnes of carbon dioxide that are produced in the manufacture of a new car and the disposal of an ancient one. But you might want to shun anyone who opts for the ghastly Toyota Prius, which has become the hybrid petrol-electric car of choice for eco-conscious motorists. Although Toyota were pulled up for exaggerating claims about the carbon emissions of the Prius, their popularity continues. It’s embarrassing really. For the ecocide convert, telling anyone that you drive a Prius is like telling someone you are about to kiss that you have glandular fever.
You look past your framed portrait of Wiedeking and out through the window. Below is the Victoria Embankment, London, a riverside drag-strip where City lawyers in Cayennes vie with motorcycle couriers to see who can burn the most rubber in the 100 metres to the next traffic light. You hope that there will never be an end to such scenes. You gaze at Wiedeking and wink.
* Campaign against fast cars and 4x4s sparks mass slashing of tyres throughout Europe. Probable.
* Congestion charges of £40 for all high-polluting vehicles introduced in every major European city by 2015. Unlikely.
* The driver of a Porsche Cayenne is dragged from their vehicle in Mayfair by eco-activists.The car is torched and the driver covered in green paint and tar. Possible.
* Sales of eco-friendly cars double those of gasguzzlers by 2014. Likely.
* By 2015, every prominent European politician has acquired a Prius in which to drive his family to the airport for an exotic long-haul holiday. Odds on.
Likelihood of gaz-guzzlers becoming commercially extinct by 2015: 41%