Why are Britain's streets still so polluted? Because the car industry dinosaurs do what they like, and politicians let them | George Monbiot

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George Monbiot argues that UK car-industry lobbying and political delay are slowing the transition to electric vehicles, leaving streets polluted and risking higher greenhouse-gas emissions. He frames the debate as a failure of leadership and industrial readiness as the COP31 climate summit begins.

The transition to electric vehicles should be moving apace, but it is not. And why? Incompetence, expedience and cowardice This is how it works. An industry puts tremendous effort into resisting change: lobbying governments, mobilising the media, pouring money into junktanks. It argues that a transition would threaten jobs, or damage the national interest, or harm poor people, while what it really fears is the cost of retooling its plants or developing new protocols. Then, when the inevitable cliff edge approaches, it whines that change is coming too soon. For reasons beyond its control, it isn’t ready, so the government must delay its plans. This is what triggered the Dutch nitrate crisis, and the UK’s repeated “emergency” exemptions from the ban on a devastating class of pesticides. Now the same dynamic is driving the UK’s crisis over the transition to electric vehicles (EVs). The result is that, as the global climate summit, Cop31, begins, it looks as if our gift to the world will be a major, predictable and entirely avoidable increase in the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...