My efforts to comment on this have produced an essay, so I am going to post it in three parts, which readers may read from as they will. In Part 1, I explained why I believe that Europe is the right forum in which to address climate change. In this part I will look at Wednesday’s announcement and explain why I feel it is misjudged. In Part 3 I will offer a liberal alternative to the authoritarian socialism that has suffused much of the environmentalist debate.
I have explained in a previous post (probably to the boredom of many of my readers) why economics compels us to treat carbon pollution as a European phenomenon (efforts to create a world-wide approach having failed). Sadly, European solutions are not promising.
The proposal announced by the commission on Wednesday is aimed at improving the efficiency of our driving. Apparently, we are all driving inefficiently, and this is causing our cars to emit more carbon-laden exhaust than is necessary to get us from A to B. Late gear changes, sloppy breaking, stop/start driving, the speed at which we drive and low tyre pressure make our driving inefficient. Something needs to be done.
In the worst traditions of untrammelled bureaucracy, the solution proposed by Industry Commissioner Günter Verheugen is to micromanage our driving. Manufacturers are to be required to fit new cars with electronic stability control, emergency braking systems and warning lights that tell drivers when to change gear or pump up their tyres. The commission also plan to make it compulsory to use headlights even in broad daylight – a policy that might have some merit on grey days in northern Europe, but which will baffle Spaniards in the blazing sun of June.
The commission is not alone in this sort of enviro-economic engineering. Mayor of London Ken Livingstone is expanding his congestion charge by creating a Low Emissions Zone. Richmond Council is to penalise drivers of “gas guzzling” cars through a graduated price for parking permits. These, too, are blunt tools that unnecessarily obstruct freedom of choice. There is something particularly egregious about the European Commission’s plans, however.
While there is probably some merit in encouraging people to drive more efficiently, doing so in this interfering way is likely to generate anger and derision in equal measure. The car is a symbol of freedom for many, and its operation an art. To have it reduced to a science and guided by a bank of irritating lights on the dashboard is likely to infuriate drivers; rather than improving driving quality, it will simply cause drivers to curse the European Union while sticking black tape over the lights. The danger of flicking lights distracting drivers needs also to be considered – I would prefer drivers near me watched the road rather than the dashboard.
As I will explain in Part 3, there is no reason why efforts to curb carbon emissions need to involve bureaucratic control of the minutiae of decision-making. What matters is the aggregate amount of carbon mankind emits; individual decisions as to the source of those emissions are unimportant.
Ironically, the proper solution to car emissions – as a result of both the quality and the quantity of our driving – is revealed in the Commission’s own case. In response to industry criticism that the new bells and whistles may add up to £2,000 to the price of a new car, the Commission argues that drivers will save more in the long run due to lower fuel bills. If this is true then it is surely in the drivers’ own interests to drive more sensibly, in which case this intervention is not needed.
What is needed is a system that makes polluters aware of and bear the costs of their pollution, but one that does not arbitrarily punish some emissions or emitters over others, instead letting individuals continue to make decisions about how to allocate their resources (including the carbon they are prepared to ‘buy’) as they see fit. In Part 3 I will set out the options.
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