Re: [T3] For whom the bell tolls...

[Steven Ayres <comwest@well.com>]

Apologies, listers, if this thread carries insufficient T3 content. 
Lemme know if you want me to shut up about it.

JimA=> I have a VERY difficult P£}h this claim.  

I did, too, but let's not overstate it. The results I find most 
interesting are from a continuing study of exhaust emissions in traffic 
using a mobile laser spectrometer, which is able to identify specific 
exhaust content from specific vehicles in motion. This study, which 
has been peer-reviewed, has shown that something like 90% of the noxious 
gases emitted by passenger cars come from a little less than 10% of the 
cars, and there is no reliable correlation by age of the car. In other 
words, 10% of cars of *all ages* are by far the largest polluters. 

But even if you don't buy that, it seems clear to me that the numbers of 
older cars on the road as a proportion of all cars does not warrant the 
special attention given them as scrappage targets. Further, most 
scrappage schemes have not discriminated between a once-a-year parade car, 
a well-maintained daily driver, a smoking pile of rust, and a dead hulk 
in someone's back yard. The targets have been changing somewhat as the 
supporters of this sort of legislation have discovered which ones are 
harder, but I think the history of the effort shows that the elimination 
of gross pollution sources is not its goal. 

=> I love my cars, but I also love the environment 

As do I, and I have the street cred as a tree-hugging activist to prove 
it. I agree with you utterly on taking personal responsibility, but I 
will not allow the suits to get away with political shell games and 
murdering the environment while I regularly assuage my liberal guilt at 
the recycling center. My cars are part of the problem, sure, but they're 
not a big enough part to deserve crushing to benefit the shareholders of 
Unocal. It makes more sense to me to start with cleaning up the largest 
sources of pollution. 

=> IMHO, there is really just one main problem out there and that is 
=> overpopulation.  

I look at this in a different way: it's not what you do so much as how 
you go about doing it. Me-firstism is the problem, and it only grows 
more obvious wàø–y of us meez trying to be first.

Steven Ayres, Prescott AZ
'66 KGhia 1600

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