The billion-dollar campaign to electrify transport

Summary

Climate-change advocate Monica Araya is part of a global campaign working to reduce the vast quantities of emissions from approximately one billion vehicles worldwide. Yet, despite the progress being made with environmentally-friendly vehicles, only one per cent of the global stock of cars and trucks are currently electric. The global countdown campaign is about changing transportation, with all the environmental benefits to people and the planet. Araya argues that because of the scale and speed of climate change, activists need to work with all the levers of change simultaneously:

Cities have to engage with other cities. 

Activists have to engage with politicians and companies. 

Business coalitions have to be created. 

Citizens have to be empowered so that they can play their part. 

We have to create political s0pace to enable stricter environmental policy regulation.

Araya says more than 70 organisations have created a coalition and a global campaign called Drive Electric. She claims this coalition has persuaded the European Commission to propose that after 2035, there will be no more sales of petrol and diesel cars. Despite this progress, Araya says some vehicle companies are still planning to build fossil-fuel vehicles until 2050. Transcript available here.

Worth noting that electric cars, to be carbon-neutral, need to be manufactured using green resources and recharged from electricity generated from a carbon-neutral source. See: Are electric cars ‘green’? The answer is yes, but it’s complicated