Hunger in the Third World countries, an irretrievably destroyed environment, hundreds of billions of euros spent on absolute nonsense – biofuels. Hypocritically acting as nothing has happened, we have silently canceled the targets for biofuels. Unfortunately, we did not learn anything, and we are on the best way to seriously damaging the Czech economy by lowering CO2 emission limits.
The European Parliament proposes a 40 percent reduction in CO2 emissions for cars by 2030. EU member states propose 35 percent and Czech politicians, in line with German politicians, call it a great success of diplomacy.
The draft of Brussels is not so strict this time. MEPs and some member states, hunted by environmental activists, compete with each other to see who will push for more cuts, regardless of the technological possibilities and the damages they will cause.
Emission limits carry a problem that everyone knows about, but nobody addresses it, because the whole fight for greener cars would collapse like a house of cards. The emissions limits legislation anticipates that an electric car has zero CO2 emissions. But in fact, the production of an electric car has a negative effect on the environment, the batteries are powered mainly by coal from coal-fired power plants, and the recycling of electric cars is particularly complicated because rare elements in batteries cannot be recycled. Legislators, however, ignore this process. Otherwise, the production of electric cars would not make sense.
Consequently, the current practice is nothing but subsidies for the sale of electric cars and the fines for not following the emission limits are drastic. Carmakers selling electric cars will have to go well below the actual car production costs to meet the emission limits. Basically, their margins will fall, resulting in mass dismissal. Volkswagen has already warned that it will dismiss 100,000 people out of a total of 550,000 employees. At Czech Škoda Auto, the same model would mean dismissing 7,000 people. The Czech Republic is a supplying giant, and the automotive industry represents 10 percent of Czech GDP.
Additionally, carmakers will no longer be able to produce affordable lower-class cars because they would risk high fines for the emissions of such cars. This would limit the availability of cars to low-income and medium-income groups. The poor would essentially subsidize the rich in their purchase of a car.
The regulation is even more nonsense if you realize the real share of car traffic in CO2 emissions. It represents 5.5 percent of the 3.5 percent CO2 emissions for which humanity is responsible. Thus, the share of cars in CO2 emissions is 0.2 percent.
We try to solve a real problem simply, with minimal resistance. Cars are something that everybody thinks is a problem, and the carmakers earn enough to survive it somehow. Politicians have chosen the simplest target that will have a significantly negative impact on the Czech Republic.
