The Carbon Sense Coalition today called for an end to the massive subsidies to the green car industry and to rich buyers of green car toys.
The Chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, said that to waste taxpayer funds helping foreign car manufacturers to produce cars that consumers don’t want is bad policy.
“Worse still is a policy that encourages people to trash a roadworthy car and buy a trendy new one they do not need.”
Forbes explained:
“To collect, transport and scrap one car and build and deliver another one costs a lot in money, metals, and energy.
“These misguided policies benefit car manufacturers, car dealers, car financiers and some consumers. Everyone else, including the environment, is a loser.
“None of the so called green cars are really green.
“Electric motors, compressed air motors and hydrogen “fuel” are promoted as clean and green, but none of them are sources of energy. All of them need conventional electric power to provide their stored energy.
“Electric cars must fill their batteries from a power point. Compressed air cars must fill their tanks from a compressor which probably uses electricity. And a hydrogen car, if one ever appears, must fill its tank from a refinery using heaps of electricity to produce hydrogen from water or hydrocarbons.
“And where will the electricity come from? In Australia right now 93% of electricity comes from combustion of hydrocarbons such as coal, gas and oil. That will not change dramatically or quickly without putting the lights out. And a dramatic switch to “green” cars plus bans and taxes on hydrocarbon energy increases the chance of that.
“Electric cars are nifty and quiet, and may reduce harmful concentrations of hot exhaust gases in city air, but in Australia they will run mainly on carbon fuel. There will be zero reduction in the production of carbon dioxide (as if that matters anyway).
“The market is the best judge whether diesel, hybrid, electric, petrol or compressed air cars are used. The answer will vary from family to family and from city to country.
“For too long governments have been throwing subsidies at foreign car companies and “green” car buyers. Now they are pushing low cost cars out of the market with their “big bucks for old bombs” giveaway.
“Subsidies always encourage waste of the subsidised product – it is not a sustainable policy. The marginal savings in fuel consumption will never compensate for this extravagance.
“Green car subsidies are dud policies and should be subject to an immediate recall notice.”
Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, has spent his life working in exploration, mining, farming, infrastructure, financial analysis and political commentary. He has worked for government departments, private companies and now works as a private contractor and farmer.
Viv has also been a guest writer for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Business Queensland and mining newspapers. He was awarded the “Australian Adam Smith Award for Services to the Free Society” in 1988, and has written widely on political, technical and economic subjects.
