Could the G8 make it impossible to register and license cars that run on gasoline by 2025? Would it be desirable? Two economists, Volker Perthes and Friedemann Müller from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, believe that it would not only be possible but desirable and are asking Angela Merkel, who will be EU president from 1 January for six months to take a lead in the process …
They say on Oil Change International that.
"such a decision would have a strongly positive economic and geopolitical impact”
and
“The G8 countries should therefore agree to no longer license any new, oil-powered cars from 2025 onwards.”
They explain:
"This decision would not be directed against individual mobility, but against the dissipation of a scarce resource that is more urgently needed to produce synthetic materials”.
In my other life as a chemicals journalist, I would applaud that sentiment. Only about 10% of the total world oil use goes to make the fibres, plastics, paints, detergents and other useful things. 90% is used to produce gasoline and diesel and in those products.
By using precious oil for other chemicals and products we get much better value from the scarce resource than we do by simply burning it to move around. But I think that we would have to be sure that the environmental damage caused by the change to non-oil fuels was no worse than using oil.
What do you think?