快猫短视频

LAST weekend, I said goodbye to another dear old friend. We had 12 fine years together but our relationship was becoming dysfunctional. Unwanted emissions and serious health issues were the final straw, leaving me with no choice but to make a trip to the knacker鈥檚 yard.

I am now car-free for the first time in 20 years, and it feels strange. When I gave up meat, I did so mainly for environmental reasons, and I didn鈥檛 miss it at all. I would like to say the same about my car, but I can鈥檛. It was first and foremost a financial decision: keeping the old banger on the road was getting too expensive.

But doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still doing the right thing. I now have a chance to rethink how I move myself and my family around, and can try to find a more environmentally benign means of transport. However, this has turned out to be less straightforward than I had originally imagined.

Going car-free is, I suspect, a lifestyle change that many of us are going to make over the next few years, as car ownership becomes increasingly unnecessary, expensive and socially unacceptable.

Earlier this month, the UK government announced that the scheduled 2040 ban on new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars will be brought forward to 2035 or earlier, lest its net-zero target disappears in a puff of exhaust smoke 鈥� not to mention the issue of air pollution.

I was also chafing at increasingly restrictive parking and congestion charges, low-emission zones, maintenance costs, insurance premiums and vehicle taxes. All of these gradually disincentivised me from owning a car, and I suspect the same is true for others too.

Anecdotally, the exodus is already happening. The dealer who bought my car said business was good 鈥� lots of people are offloading their vehicles and choosing not to buy a new one. On my way to the dealership, I found that my local petrol station had closed down, the third to vanish from my area in as many years. Car-sharing schemes and electric vehicle-charging points are springing up in their place.

Nonetheless, actually hitting the brakes is hard. Cars are very, very convenient. I am lucky that I live in London with its decent public transport, improving cycling infrastructure and swarms of cabs and car-share schemes. I can鈥檛 imagine trying to go car-free in the countryside, or even in the northern city where I grew up.

鈥淚 thought I was unsentimental about the car, but when I left it in that desolate parking lot, I welled up a bit鈥�

There is also an emotional side to contend with. I am no petrolhead and thought I was unsentimental about the car, but when I left it in that desolate parking lot, I welled up a tiny bit. Remember that summer when we drove to the west coast of Ireland?

Now she is gone, I am free to see other cars. I still need to get around. But how? I already cycle to work and use public transport when appropriate. But there are some occasions when a car seems to be the only way.

I won鈥檛 buy one: I have joined a car-share scheme and will use taxis more often. I will hire a car if I need to drive a long distance. But then I am still travelling in fossil-fuelled cars. Just like when I quit meat and ended up eating more cheese, I fear I may have swapped one environmental sin for another.

I also shudder to think about the ultimate fate of my car. I have just offloaded more than a tonne of metal, plastic, rubber, fabric, electronics, grease, oil and petrol that will eventually end up in landfill. There are millions of similarly decrepit vehicles in the UK alone that will have to go somewhere.

Maybe I am overthinking it. According to Charlie Wilson, a climate scientist at the UK鈥檚 Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, getting rid of a private car is definitely a positive step towards carbon neutrality.

He points to research by the OECD鈥檚 . 鈥淭hey showed that moving from a private vehicle fleet to a shared vehicle fleet can dramatically cut the number of vehicles you need to deliver the mobility that we need and want. You can pretty much remove congestion at a stroke, and if that vehicle fleet is electrified, you can also reduce CO₂ emissions close to zero.鈥� So in other words, if you are wavering over your car, go on 鈥� just get rid of it. Or maybe wait a bit longer for the policy landscape to change: reportedly, the who scrap their cars 拢3000 in transport vouchers.

In case you were wondering, I got 拢50 for mine. My wife suggested that we spend it on a tree, to atone in part for its lifetime emissions (though there was so much moss and algae growing on the bodywork that it was almost offsetting them already). OK, I said, let鈥檚 take a trip down to the garden centre. Have you seen the car keys?