As the EU doubles down on its green agenda, lawmakers in the European Parliament approved a measure to support a ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2035.
MEPs met in the French city of Strasbourg and passed a resolution requiring automakers to cut carbon emissions by 100% by 2035, effectively prohibiting the sale of new combustion engine cars in the 27 member countries.
After a measure to protect hybrid automobiles from the centre-right European People’s Party was voted down, the legislation would ban the sale of hybrid vehicles that still use some gas. According to Euractiv, the EPP also failed to implement an amendment that would have taken into consideration the overall carbon emissions involved in the construction of a vehicle.
“This position of the European Parliament is an important victory and consistent with our objective of climate neutrality,” said Pascal Canfin, chair of the EU’s environmental committee.
According to estimates from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, only 18% of cars driven in the EU last year were electric or hybrid, implying that Europeans will have to drastically change their driving habits over the next decade to conform to left-wing lawmakers’ wishes.
The European People’s Party’s Agnes Evren stated the proposal will “condemn industrial activity and strongly penalise consumers.”
Evren argued that the legislation would prevent electric car alternatives such as high-performance hybrids and biofuel vehicles from entering the market, despite the fact that they have the potential to be even more environmentally friendly than electric vehicles, which often still use coal or natural gas to power them.
However, many have questioned whether electric automobiles, which take enormous amounts of energy to manufacture, including rare earth mineral extraction for their batteries, are helpful in decreasing carbon emissions.
Bjrn Lomborg, the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, has previously said that while electric automobiles are “labelled as environmentally good,” “producing the electricity they require nearly invariably includes burning fossil fuels.”
The vast energy required to build the batteries for electric cars, according to the former director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute, implies that they start reducing emissions only after being driven 60,000 kilometres.
Electric automobiles have become a cause de jour for globalist politicians in the West, despite their high cost and limitations. In 2020, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared that the UK would seek a similar ban on combustion engines by 2030 as part of his Build Back Better plan, allocating £2.8 billion in government funds to support the electric car industry.