Even die-hard petrolheads can no longer ignore it – our planet is heating up and the climate is changing. The ice record is the most damning evidence. CO2 measurements only date back to the 1980s, but due to bubbles trapped in the Antarctic ice, we can look back more than 800,000 years.
From this, it’s crystal clear that CO2 and methane levels started to rise very steeply from 1900. By 2000, the levels had more than doubled, compared to the previous 798,000 years. This isn’t a blip, or some random climate anomaly: it’s a byproduct of human activity.
The evidence is irrefutable. The only question is how to tackle the defining challenge of our times.
Although vehicles are often the main scapegoat, they’re only one element of a much broader issue. Cars were not around in significant numbers to have an effect in 1900, yet CO2 and methane levels began to rise then, so it was the wider development of industry and intensive farming as a whole that first started to affect the environment.
Any product that you buy will have an environmental impact, in terms of its production, transportation and eventual disposal. So buying no more products might be the best way to save the planet – but because we humans rely on trading goods to survive, that’s never going to be a viable solution.
