The mobility that cars have brought us over the past hundred years has been a wonderful thing, but the carbon dioxide and pollution that come out of their back ends, not so much. Political parties are split between those wanting everyone in electric vehicles, preferably yesterday, and those worrying that pushing drivers into electric vehicles is a recipe for more expensive cars, charging anxiety, and – worst of all – tradies losing their utes.

It may sound too good to be true, but there’s a proven way to reduce carbon emissions and unhealthy pollutants, without dictating to anybody what car they can drive. Australia should adopt an emissions standard, or ceiling, for new light vehicles, applied across the offering of each manufacturer, just like 80 per cent of the rest of the world does. The ceiling should be gradually lowered to zero emissions by 2035. We’d get a better range of low-emissions cars to choose from – even more so if we also insisted on cleaner petrol for cars with internal combustion engines. These policies wouldn’t solve all the problems cars cause, but they’d certainly help.

Light vehicles cause 11 per cent of Australia’s carbon emissions. This report shows that under a carefully designed emissions ceiling for new light vehicles, that figure could be dramatically reduced by 2035.

An emissions ceiling could achieve at least 40 per cent of Australia’s emissions reduction task between now and 2030.

As well as emitting less carbon dioxide, drivers would save money, and the cost to taxpayers would be negligible. Before 2035, manufacturers that wanted to sell high-emitting vehicles – such as large, petrol utes – could continue to do so, but would need to offset their above-the-ceiling emissions by selling enough low-emitting vehicles, such as electric vehicles or cleaner petrol or diesel vehicles.