My father once told me that when he was a boy in the 1920s he worried that the world’s oil would run out before he could own a car. Happily it didn’t, and he went on to own and enjoy many cars. I was always more of a motorcycle enthusiast, gaining my first bike licence when I was 16 and seeing no reason to get a car licence till I was 22. I soon saw the advantages of both and, since then, bikes and cars have been a huge part of my life.

So the recent announcement by the British government that sales of all petrol- and diesel-engined cars will cease in 2030 came as a shock. It’s not that it wasn’t expected (it’s been trumpeted for a long time, with only the date changing), but knowing that the ban is now just 10 years off is a serious game-changer. On a practical level, maybe the impact won’t be so great: petrolheads like me can just buy the biggest, baddest petrol-engined car we can find in 2029 and know that it will see out my days. We’ll just have to hope that the network of petrol stations will still be in place.

What I’m having trouble getting my head around are all the other implications. Where to start? All the talk is about cars. Well, what about motorcycles? For now, there are no plans to include bikes in the ICE ban, but who knows what our rulers will decree? What happens to research and development in the ICE sector? Much though the environmentalists fail to acknowledge the fact, car manufacturers have made huge progress in reducing exhaust pollution and cutting fuel consumption, both of which help the environment. With only 10 years of sales potential left, will ICE R&D just stop dead now? That would be unprecedented.

Then there’s the headlong rush toward electric vehicles as the future of transport. On whose advice? Let’s not forget that the Labour government in 2001 prompted the “dash for diesel” because some numpty persuaded the Chancellor that carbon dioxide (CO2) was the enemy. Diesels produce less CO2, so they were judged better for the environment despite their high nitrogen oxide and particulate emissions. So much for experts.

Now we have experts pushing EVs. Why should they be believed? EVs are considerably more expensive than conventional cars; their range is abysmal; it’s doubtful whether the charging network will ever be sufficient; and what happens to those of us who live in flats or houses with no off-street parking? We’ll be forced to rely exclusively on commercial charging stations. A new report just out claims an EV has to cover 48,500 miles before its total CO2 footprint comes down to the level of a petrol-engined car, due to the amount of pollution associated with its manufacture. Hydrogen fuel cells seem to provide a better alternative, although the nay-sayers point to the amount of energy needed to manufacture the hydrogen gas. Let’s see some investment into tackling that issue before we get too far down the traditional EV route. And there’s a Porsche-led consortium busy making a synthetic fuel for ICEs, too.

Then there’s the matter of how much vehicle emissions contribute to global warming. At the time of maximum Covid-19 lockdown, with only 5% of normal car and air traffic, the reduction in air pollution was a mere 17%. Are we about to experience a massive re-engineering of our daily lives, at great expense and enormous inconvenience, just to deliver a 17% cut in air pollution? What will our politicians and their expert advisers say then? Sorry? Not good enough.

A “sustainability journalist” named Tim Smedley has just written an article for The Sunday Times calling for the government to deal with “the killer car” in the wake of a coroner’s finding that the tragic death of a young girl in London was due to air pollution. The sad case involved a girl with chronic asthma living a stone’s throw from the busy South Circular Road. Anyone who knows the area will be aware of the huge number of trucks, vans and buses clogging that artery, but Smedley wants to use the incident to get people out of their cars and make them walk, cycle or take public transport. So he’s laying the blame squarely on cars, and it’s clear that he and many of his ilk are leading a crusade against something they see as elitist. He doesn’t even mention EVs as a possible solution to his problem. In the real world, walking, cycling and buses/trains are not practical ways of completing any of my journeys. Fancy doing a weekly family food shop by bicycle or bus?

So, in a world turned inside out by Covid and Brexit, we are facing a battle against those who (with increasing power) see private transport as inherently bad and have a vision of their own car-less (and probably motorcycle-less) utopia. Let’s hope these loons can be resisted.