Climate activists deflate SUV tyres in wealthy London neighbourhoods | Environment | The Guardian

About 40 residents of Kensington and Chelsea, Dulwich, Primrose Hill and Marylebone wake to find their tyres flat
Helena Horton
The cars have been issued with fake ‘parking fines’ on their windscreens informing them that ‘if SUV drivers were a nation, in 2018 they would have been ranked as the seventh biggest emitter of CO2’. Photograph: The Last Gasp
Climate activists have deflated the tyres of SUVs in some of London’s wealthiest postcodes to protest against the emissions from such vehicles.
About 40 SUV-owning residents of Kensington and Chelsea, Dulwich, Primrose Hill and Marylebone woke to find their tyres flat, with fake “parking fines” on their windscreens informing them that “if SUV drivers were a nation, in 2018 they would have been ranked as the seventh biggest emitter of CO2”.
The cars are often nicknamed “Chelsea tractors”, since although the vehicles were originally intended to be used on difficult terrain, they have become ubiquitous in well-off urban areas.
A recent study found that three-quarters of the 360,000 SUVs sold in 2019 in the UK were bought by people living in towns and cities, and the royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea is in the top three districts for the sale of large SUVs.