Paris, Mexico City, Athens, Madrid aim to ban diesels by 2025
If you want to drastically cut emissions, diesels are a good place to start.
Paris already banned pre-1997 cars from its city center to help battle air pollution. But now, it and three other cities are about to take it one step further and ban diesels outright.
The mayors of Paris, Mexico City, Athens and Madrid have all pledged to remove diesels from their respective cities by 2025, Autocar reports. The comments were made at the C40 Mayors Summit in Mexico City.
It's not hard to understand why it's being done. Pollution is a serious concern in car-dense city centers, and diesels have been the emissions scapegoat du jour for some time. Banning diesels from these cities would have an immediate positive effect on air quality. There's also the matter of emissions and their effects on global climate change, for those who are thinking about spaces outside these specific cities.
Banning cars to curb emissions is not new. Paris already enacted a similar ban, but for pre-1997 cars, including models with historical significance. In October, a number of German legislators signaled their desire to ban both gas and diesel cars from German roads by 2030, which might be taking things a bit too far.
These measures are stopgaps to hold us over until electric cars start taking over roads worldwide. Electric cars obviously lack tailpipe emissions, and replacing millions of gas-and-diesel-powered vehicles with EVs will also have a profound effect on air quality. But infrastructure and pricing both need to improve before the masses truly start moving in that direction.