Out of touch

Image by Aamir Mohd Khan from Pixabay

The Swedish government introduced a “scrapping bonus” in august, for those who want to replace their old car with an EV. A whopping 10 000 SEK in bonus and the requirement is that the car must be road-worthy, and you must have owned it for more than a year. Apparently, almost no-one has taken them up on the offer, what a shocker. During the first month, only 28 bonuses had been paid out of the 250 million SEK. It is moving a bit slower than expected, because the original plan was to do during 2024-2025. At first, I had to double-check whether I had read correctly. Unfortunately, I did, and this might be the most out-of-touch idea I have heard in a long time. But it gets worse…

First, good luck finding a road-worthy car with a value of less than 10 000 SEK. If it is road-worthy, it is worth a lot more. Secondly, who on Earth drives a car with one foot in the grave and replaces it with an EV for 300 000 SEK or more? Either they are completely out of touch with the reality of low-income people, or there is something else going on. They say this is “an important part to electrify our vehicle fleet” so that we can be net neutral before 2045. Net neutral is a fancy way of saying that we must make sure that the emissions from the production of our consumption takes place in other countries and end up on their CO2 account instead of ours. Kind of like constructing taller chimneys to make the pollution “go away”.

These old cars already exist, and the CO2 “debt” from their production has already been paid long time ago, and I find it difficult to understand how it can be beneficial to get rid of something that works and can perhaps be maintained and used until it falls apart. Then, for sure, take it to the scrapper. However, maintaining old equipment and selling reliable products is bad for business. Much better profit to throw it away and buy something new.

When reading up on this issue, I found something even more interesting. A statement by a so-called company car expert, who correctly pointed out that the scrapping premium is pointless. Then he presents his own idea; to introduce a penalty tax of 25 000 SEK on all cars older than 20 years. The penalty tax should apply to all cars and should not carry any condition that you have to scrap the car and replace it with an EV. He thinks that the best way to save the planet is to make it very expensive to drive old (and cheap) cars. He does not mention the outcome, but it is obvious. Poor people should not be allowed to have a car. To save the planet, only the wealthy must be allowed to drive a car, and there are a lot fewer wealthy people than poor people. Consequently, emissions can be reduced. The worst thing we can do is to produce cheap cars, because then everybody can afford to drive them and that will significantly increase our resource consumption. No, we must make everything more expensive so that people use less. And there is no better way to do that than to increase the cost of energy. So that the poor people stay poor. It is often a good approach to study someone’s actions – not their words – and their corresponding consequences, and therefrom deduce the underlying motive. Certain parts of the environmentalist movement oppose even climate-friendly energy production like hydro. This is a rational approach if you consider human beings a cancer on the planet. More energy = More human exploitation.

I do not believe that striking the poor with surgical precision is the proper way forward. A poor person could not care less about the planet. They care about their next meal. And the best way to help them with that is to produce abundant energy and make it as cheap as possible. When you have basic safety, a roof over your head and food on the table, then and only than can (and will) you start caring about the future. Thus, I believe that the only way forward is by innovation and not by austerity. We have no moral or ethical grounding to deny others the freedoms we enjoy ourselves.

I would not dare to utter anything so out of touch with reality as to introduce a penalty tax for old cars. I think it reveals some rather unpleasant values about how you look at your fellow humans. Other ways of saving the planet are to introduce special CO2 taxes on airplane tickets, so we can get rid of the poor people in the airports. Increasing energy prices to reduce consumption will increase food prices. Which in turn, guarantees that those that are barely clinging on by a thread today, starve to death. Actions have consequences. We can easily kill off millions by increasing the price of food. But to those who consider human beings to be a cancer on the planet this should sound like a good idea. If that’s your cup of tea, you can go to hell. And you probably will.