The greening of the passenger car might not deliver such positive sustainability news – So what do we have to do?

As we promote the need to reduce emissions at the tailpipe for cars, trucks, and buses, we may be neglecting the full story on what this might mean for achieving a broad set of sustainability goals. While not denying the merits of reducing tailpipe emissions, there are many unresolved questions about the indirect emission impacts as well as other sustainability impacts such as traffic congestion. This short paper attempts to place the debate within a wider setting if only to achieve more than what we see governments at all levels including the political process and the bureaucracy that serve politicians, too often myopically focussing on. This paper has many objectives, one of which is to confront the mistakes and biased analysis commonly provided by many, but not all, governments, and to highlight the contributions that should be made by independent thought leaders.