Kerby Anderson

The latest information from the World Economic Forum shows that the Davos crowd wants you to give up your car. Tucked inside a briefing paper is a plan to reduce the number of cars around the world by 75 percent.

The title of the paper is: “The Urban Mobility Scorecard Tool: Benchmarking the Transition to Sustainable Urban Mobility.” It begins with the prediction that more than two-thirds of the world’s population will be urban by 2050. The paper argues that the only way to achieve the climate goals of the Paris Agreement is to push for “electrification, public transport, and shared mobility.”

That means fewer cars. The goal is to reduce the number of vehicles from 2.1 billion to 0.5 billion in less than 30 years. This would be one way to slash emissions from passenger vehicles. I have another suggestion on how to slash emissions. We can restrict participants at World Economic Forum events from flying in private jets that have a significant carbon footprint.

Let me ask you a question. Do you like owning a car? It gives you much greater mobility than mass transportation. In fact, you may live in an area that has inadequate mass transportation.

The push toward more electric cars assumes that states are producing enough additional electricity for those electric cars. How is your state doing these days in producing enough electricity to cool your home? Do you think it will be able to produce enough additional electricity to power more electric cars on the road?

Reducing the number of cars will require massive central planning. I’m not sure too many Americas are ready for politicians and bureaucrats to control their lives in this way.