Cars have had an impact on society possibly unrivalled by any other consumer innovation in human history. Because of the scale and breadth of their impact - and the deep emotional response they invoke, the sense of identity that apparently comes with being wrapped up in a mobile metal box - cars have come to represent all that is best and worst about modern consumer society.
Cars have given people the mobility to work further afield, to stay in touch with families, to broaden their horizons. Road transport has opened up trade to even the most remote communities, often bringing liberty and democracy, health, education and personal comforts.
On the negative side, there are increasingly urgent problems, many of them eroding the very benefits of owning and driving a car in the first place. Building cars uses considerable raw materials and energy. In 2004, 45 million cars were built worldwide - 1.6 million in Britain - reducing the planet's natural resources and considerably adding to pollution.
All those extra cars need roads, but roads destroy natural habitats, use up construction materials and sever communities. Where there are too few roads for the cars, congestion has become one of the greatest constraints on economic growth in rich and poor countries alike. Congestion costs the British economy alone an estimated £20bn a year in wasted time and resources and lost business. According to the World Health Organisation, in 1998 an estimated 1.2 million people died in road accidents; by 2020, road accidents will be the third-biggest cause of death and injury, after heart disease and serious depression.
The greatest impact of cars, however, is the petrol and diesel they consume, draining valuable fossil fuel reserves and generating a huge proportion of man-made pollution blamed for problems from asthma to global climate change. In Britain, transport - the vast majority of which is by road - contributes a quarter of the country's carbon dioxide emissions, and the figure is still rising. A report for the Washington DC-based World Resources Institute in 2003 estimated that fuel production and use accounted for 94 per cent of a vehicle's carbon pollution.
If society is serious about reducing the threat of climate change, it will have to drastically reduce carbon emissions. This cannot be done without a transformation of every aspect of our lives, especially how we travel.
For years environmentalists have been exhorting people to get out of their cars and use public transport, cycle, walk or just stay at home. Today the message is more subtle: motorists are still urged to use their cars less and drive them more efficiently, but policy-makers have recognised that those who have cars are unwilling to give them up, and that those who don't will not relinquish the dream. So they have turned their attention to removing the pollution from the vehicles, rather than removing the vehicles.
In the past decade or so, car manufacturers have made significant strides towards making existing models much more efficient, but progress has slowed recently and few expect the industry to meet its target of an average new car emissions standard of 140g per kilometre by 2008. The holy grail is a mass market for cars that emit little or no carbon and other pollutants, including sulphur, nitrous oxides and particulates.
This is an extraordinary vision of the future: tantalisingly within sight, but still far off. There are dozens of 'alternative fuel' vehicles available now, including buses that run on hydrogen fuel cells, hybrid electric-petrol engine cars, and models powered by fuel made from crops, trees and even waste. Apart from the celebrated Toyota Prius, few of these models have made much of an impression on the mass consumer market. In Britain - which has one of the strongest markets for alternative fuel vehicles, thanks to government grants and tax incentives - estimates of the number of such cars range from just 6,255 to 25,000 of the country's 29 million cars.
In the long term, the industry's 'ultimate aim' is for cars powered by fuel cells, run on hydrogen generated from clean, renewable sources, says Keith Lewis of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders in Britain. But, he admits, 'how we get there and what happens between now and then is an issue nobody has an answer to'.
For manufacturers, this is, literally, the multi-billion dollar question. For environmentalists, for politicians, and for people everywhere threatened by climate change, it could be a matter of life or death.
Inevitably, therefore, there are plenty of suggestions. Tony Bosworth, transport campaigner for the environmental lobby group Friends of the Earth, says current voluntary targets for manufacturers should be swapped for mandatory limits on emissions. The average current emissions of new cars are 169g of carbon dioxide per kilometre. Bosworth thinks they could achieve 120g/km by 2012. 'Car manufacturers can do that within their current technical capability,' he says. 'They say it's too expensive to do it - it will add too much to the price of the car. Well, it will add to the price, but the industry has a record of overestimating the cost of complying with these sorts of regulations. Also, if you look at the more global picture, [motorists] save a lot more in fuel costs.'
The Energy Saving Trust, the not-for-profit organisation responsible for reducing carbon use in homes and transport, believes ministers need to do more. It wants central government and local authorities to give a lead by investing in more alternative-fuel cars, to boost the market and encourage consumers to follow their example.
Manufacturers also want more support from government and from oil companies. 'We can do everything we can, but if you go to Tesco and can't fill [the new car] up, we're screwed,' says Lewis. 'We can only make these things happen if we all work together, so there has to be an infrastructure to operate, which means we have all got to be aiming for the same thing.' Ultimately, this means governments 'have got to pick a winner', adds Lewis.
But there is one point on which almost all sides agree: green groups, the EST, motoring organisations such as the RAC, and even some carmakers. This is that government should greatly increase the difference between car tax bands, which are priced according to emissions. This, they believe, would give motorists a greater incentive to buy more efficient and alternative-fuel models, and generate the momentum needed to turn lots of prototypes and a few pilot projects into a mass market. 'The government has got the research which shows this would work,' adds Bosworth.
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