Paul Murphy questions EV SUVs, urges bans and public transport

Thanks a lot to all the speakers and to the chair for suggesting this because I think it is a very important discussion and obviously the speakers are all, you know, in agreement about the problem that the rise of SUVs represents. To me it seems that we have an example here of the Jevons paradox in operation where supposedly an increase in resource efficiency will lead to a decrease in resource usage, but in fact it actually is the opposite. where we end up using more resources and for me it points to the illusion of the idea of green growth. So I agree with all the presenters that there's a big problem here in terms of carbon emissions, in terms of road safety, in terms of road space that needs to be addressed. Fundamentally I think all four of you pointed towards the way of doing this effectively being to change the taxation model to nudge a change in people's behaviour. And I just wonder whether that does not go far enough and whether it won't have an impact quick enough, but it also will lead to a resentment and a sense of injustice whereby those with more wealth can continue to drive SUVs, they just pay the taxes to do so, and you know, ordinary workers cannot afford to do so and it leads to a kind of resentment towards climate policy that, why do the rich get to continue, you know, to pollute? How come having more money allows you to continue to have an SUV? So I want to pose the question, should we not go further than taxation measures? For example, Professor Daly spoke about the change in smoking behaviour and I think you said, you know, a number of things we did, but like fundamentally what we did was ban it. We said that you cannot smoke inside and Ireland led the way on that internationally and that has now become accepted in large parts of the world. Why don't we introduce a ban on the sale of cars for ordinary usage above a certain weight? We don't have a car industry in this country. We have the Green Party in government. Why don't we introduce such a ban? Secondly, slightly less radical than that, why not introduce a ban on car advertising? When you become aware of it, you realise an incredible proportion of the advertising that we are subjected to is for cars. And they're all pushing this model of a certain type of car, of SUVs and so on, and even trying to pretend that EV SUVs are like, if you buy one of them, you're doing your bit for the environment, which unfortunately is not true, but people think they are. And then, and then there's finally to pose another broader question, which is that I think, I think the whole question of EV SUVs points to the limitation of horizons of those who think that the answer to all the problems we currently have with cars is to just, just, we just keep driving cars individually, we keep storing big hunks of metal that have huge embedded carbon emissions in them outside each of our homes, but we just change them and they become electric cars as opposed to petrol driven cars. It's just, it's very limited vision in terms of the kind of change that we need to see. So I don't deny that in the future society, many people in rural areas and so on will need to have access to private cars. But should we not be arguing that like electric SUVs, electric cars are not fundamentally the answer? We need a radical shift towards public transport. We then need to have car sharing within cities. And just if you could elaborate on some of the problems that like large heavy SUVs have in terms of air pollution, in terms of the carbon emissions that are embedded in them because of the energy that goes into them. And, but also in terms of the planetary boundaries, other than carbon, by going to get all this lithium that we're using for this, as opposed to batteries related to renewable energy and so on. Thanks. Thank you, Deputy Murphy. Professor Daly, go ahead. Thank you, Deputy Murphy. Lots of challenging questions there, which is to be expected and, and, and I welcome, you know, the, the, the call to really increase the ambition on policy here. And as I've alluded to before, we're really, we're not on track to meeting our carbon budgets. And, and that requires an urgency to look beyond the current, the current, the current measures that we're taking. That's not up for me to sort of say whether policymakers should be looking to, to ban cars of a certain weight. I don't know how that would be designed, you know, to, to protect people who, who need certain cars for their, for their business, for example, and how that would affect the secondhand car market. And, but I, I would say, I would agree with the deputy that a carbon mitigation measure or climate, climate action measures that focus just on vehicle electrification is not optimal. So you don't get these benefits of moving urban areas to be far less car dependent. You know, I mean, make it clear, we do, I mean, the primary, primary measure that we need to take is to reduce car dependency in the first place. And there is, and we can do that in cities as we roll out public transport, you know, public transport, cycling and so on are less attractive because there are so cars. So there's a real kind of self-perpetuating thing here. I would say that our, our dispersed settlement patterns in the countryside do lock us into car use to a certain extent for a long time. And electric vehicles do, are meaningfully better for the environment than fossil fuel cars. Yes, there are negative consequences from, for the mining of lithium. But that pales in comparison to the, to the damage that burning fossil fuels is doing to our climate and is pushing the earth past its habitable boundaries. So, you know, the, the kind of the perfect, perfect solution is, you know, nobody needs to own a car. But the, but the feasibility of getting to that is, you know, that it's given our settlement patterns and the slow rollout of, of big, large scale public transport infrastructure, it would be very difficult to see that happening within the next few decades. So in the meantime, the sooner that we can fully electrify new car sales, the better for the environment, the more we'll, likely we will reach our carbon budgets and, and so on. So you, you also talked about car advertising and I alluded to, you know, the smoking ban. And we also don't sell, we don't advertise cigarettes. And I think the government could look at regulating the advertising of cars, as we know, they have such a negative impact on the environment and public safety on air pollution and so on. I know that in France, at least at a minimum, new cars have to be, the advertising has to include suggestions around, you know, consider taking public transport, consider car sharing, for example, or, you know, we also have a lot of, a lot of software measures that, for example, people, celebrities are often paid with cars, whether that is something that can be regulated. And in general, the kind of promotion of car ownership and luxury car ownership is something that can be aspired to. And we can, like we have with cigarettes, use public policy to move away from that. Thank you. And Dr. Muck. I'm not a legal expert, but I think the situation is as it is for cigarettes, meaning that you can ban the advertisement for SUVs. I think that is possible. Also, cities can ban SUVs or certain types of vehicles from entering the urban areas or whatever areas. I think you would still face a lot of angry people going to courts against that sort of decision. But I think there's a good chance that government or cities would be allowed to do these bans. However, you would not be allowed to ban sales of SUVs. That would be against the European Union internal market regulations. I'm pretty sure that would not be possible. The idea of the taxation is that you internalize external costs, meaning that if SUVs are heavy and they pollute more, they damage roads more, they kill more people, then you take this into account and you basically make it more expensive to drive those vehicles or own those vehicles. And yes, you're right. It's so to speak unfair because rich people can still afford it. But at least the costs are internalized. They are paid by the people owning these cars instead of being paid by the society overall. And thereby it's a little bit fairer than the current situation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.