EU Parliament Approves Ban on New Fossil Fuel Cars by 2035

Members of the European Parliament approved a measure on Wednesday supporting the ban on sales of petrol and diesel cars by the year 2035.

The measure would require automakers to cut carbon emissions by 100 per cent by 2035. The mandate effectively prohibits the sale of new cars powered by gasoline or diesel across the 27 member states.

Breitbart reports:The legislation would also ban the sale of hybrid vehicles, which still use some gas, after a measure to protect them from the centre-right European People’s Party was struck down. The EPP also failed to pass an amendment to take the total carbon emissions involved in the production of a vehicle into account, Euractiv reported.

Hailing the vote, the EU’s environmental committee chair Pascal Canfin wrote: “This position of the European Parliament is an important victory and consistent with our objective of climate neutrality.”

Estimates from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association state that currently only 18 per cent of cars driven in the EU last year were either electric or hybrids, meaning that the people of Europe will have to radically change their driving preferences over the next decade to conform with the proclivities of left-wing lawmakers.

French MEP Agnes Evren of the European People’s Party said that the move would “condemn industrial activity and strongly penalise consumers”.

Evren argued that the legislation would prevent electric car alternatives, such as high-performance hybrids and those that use biofuels from coming to market, despite their potential to be even more climate-friendly than electric cars, which often still require energy produced from coal or natural gas to run.

Indeed, many have criticised the effectiveness of electric cars, which also require vast amounts of energy to produce including the extraction of rare earth minerals for their batteries, in actually reducing carbon emissions.

The director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjørn Lomborg has previously argued that while electric cars are “branded as environmentally friendly,” the reality is that “generating the electricity they require almost always involves burning fossil fuels.”