Utopian ideas on climate change will get us precisely nowhere

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Electric cars can look the same as today's models -- or they can be much more futuristic. They can also continue to be an object of conspicuous consumption, which campaigners will have to accept, aiming to encourage the use of eco-transport and not enforce some form of back-to-nature socialism via the back door. Electric vehicles, powered by solar generators, could reduce transport emissions to zero in tropical countries, which currently account for 40% of the world's population and will account for 55% by 2050.