Why is Spain throwing away the opportunity to go for full electric mobility?
Just like the subject of Daddy Yankee’s 2004 reggaeton hit, it seems Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, also likes gasoline. Last week the Spanish government unveiled a series of measures aimed at helping the motor industry that includes incentives for low-emissions vehicles. But under the guise of technological neutrality, what it is actually doing is missing a golden opportunity to get people to buy electric vehicles and leave behind diesel and gasoline once and for all.
Spain’s auto industry association, ANFAC, says the government should limit itself to encouraging people to buy cars and allow them to decide between the different technologies available. The idea is outrageous, but trying to discuss it with those who claim, against all rational and scientific criteria, that “diesel is clean” is like trying to talk science with anti-vaxxers.
Bearing in mind all that we know about the deadly impact of air pollution, encouraging people to buy diesel or gasoline vehicles is just flat irresponsible, bordering on incitement to murder. Have we already forgotten the clean air and quiet streets we were enjoying just a few weeks ago? Why has a government that put decarbonization and the fight against the climate emergency among its electoral pledges now offering money to the Spanish people to…
