Global warming: Disgust at the barber shop

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By Paavo Rautio
     
      I was leafing through a technology magazine in my barber shop when I started to feel a bit queasy.
      The magazine had an article about the Detroit Auto Show. According to the article, the car factories are constantly pushing bigger, and more grandiose vehicles onto the US market. "The roof and the gauge are wider than before. Output is 500 horsepower, acceleration is zero to 100 kilometres per hour in 5.5 seconds. The vehicle is 15 centimetres longer, the wheelbase is wider than before. It has a 5.6 litre V8 engine with an output of 381 horsepower, and torque the size of a small village."
     
The European Commission is in a tight gap. It is planning legislation that would force cars to emit less carbon dioxide. Industry is opposed, as is the European Commissioner for Industry Günter Verheugen, who has closed ranks with industry.
      Verheugen and the car industry say that reducing carbon dioxide emissions would raise the prices of cars and could deprive the European car industry of both its competitiveness, and its jobs.
     Verheugen would prefer to adjust tyre pressures and make traffic flow more efficient.
     
The car industry has always been fairly conservative. The consumer has been believed to buy what it has always done: more size, more speed, more gadgets. Production has been set up in such a way that changes will take a long time, and will be expensive.
     At times this has led to drivers making an inside pass with their own needs. This is what happened in the United States in the 1970s, when consumers grew tired with the high price of fuel and the low-quality gas-guzzling American cars and started to buy small Japanese cars.
     The United States is again in the same situation. Worries about the state of the climate and the future prices of fuel are growing, and vehicles on offer range from American hunks to rational Japanese vehicles. No wonder, therefore, that General Motors and Ford are in financial trouble, and that GM is losing its position as the largest car manufacturer in the world to Toyota.
     
The EU offered the car industry voluntary curbs on carbon dioxide emissions in 1995. The limit (140 grammes per kilometre) was set for next year, but already now it is clear that this will not be reached - not that the efforts have been very great.
     The industry, which has ound itself in a tight spot, has tried to keep its head above water by using the familiar notion: when demand declines, offer consumers something that is bigger than before.
     If the car industry wanted to move toward lower emissions, it should guide the consumers in the same direction. It does not necessarily know how to go there itself, because the marketing of cars appears to be focused on engine output, large size, and a showy lifestyle.
     Undoubtedly car advertisements, and technology magazines would become more boring: machismo would be replaced by an emphasis on common sense and responsibility.
      Less carbon dioxide emissions than before, or "Consumption and user costs at a minimum".
     This would not necessarily be a comptetely impossible change in attitude. Just ten years ago, driving safety was not a major factor in selling vehicles. European crash tests changed the situation, and factories started making safer cars in the knowledge that consumers would take note of the results of the tests.
     
It may well be that signs of climate change might raise consciousness among consumers about the "eco-safety" of a car. If more people start feeling nauseous at the barber shop, the market will change: the forerunners of ecological safety will increase their market shares and their income.
     The EU would be well to promote such development, through coercion, and through taxation decisions by the Finnish government. One option would be to remove the tax on diesel fuel. Today's diesel engines cause up to one third less carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline models. However, is there still any point in penalising the buyer?
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 1.2.2007


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Poll: Finns want politicians to take action on climate change (30.1.2006)
  New mission for Jorma Ollila: fighting climate change (28.1.2007)

PAAVO RAUTIO / Helsingin Sanomat
paavo.rautio@hs.fi