Richard Zurawski

Okay folks. Here we go again. More freaking “environmental” nonsense from the people who brought you the Hummer and the ridiculous popinjays we call our political leaders. Take your old pre-1995 gas guzzling, environment-trashing car and buy a new more fuel-efficient, green car, save the environment and pat yourself on the back for putting another consumer nail in the climate change coffin.

What a load of hooey! The last thing we need on this planet is another automobile, new, used or otherwise. Let’s do a little deconstructing here and see what the stats tell us. And again, where is the media on this, the TV, radio and print mavens who are supposed to, as the fifth estate, keep us on the straight and narrow of the news? Let’s start with the new car and it’s supposed superior fuel efficiency. Here is a little tidbit. The Ford Model T got 25 miles per gallon (U.S.) in the mid 1920s. Today, there is not a car company on the face of the Earth that gets this milage on their collective fleets. And the new cars have the horsepower equivalence of the space shuttle. Where the T topped out at about 60 miles per hour, going downhill, with a stiff tailwind, these road monsters can all clock in at over 100 miles an hour. And add to that on the highways and biways of our country how many cars do you ever see going below 110 kmh. Try driving the speed limit and count the nanoseconds till some yahoo in a modern road rocket blows past you at warp nine, making Captain Kirk and the Enterprise look like some stick in the highway mud.

Now let’s add to that the environmental cost of building the SUV. One tonne of metal, increasing petrochemical industry plastic spinoff, all mined, refined, pumped and shipped around the world burning yet more gas and diesel. Then add to that the rare earths, most toxic and requiring extensive refining, again at the environment expense, in third world countries where human rights and environmental concerns rate just below a snake’s belly in a wagon rut, to quote that professor of high thought, Jed Clampitt. Then, because we make almost nothing ourselves, the completed products are shipped around the world to our green-eyed consumers, ready to save the world, environmentally, one car at a time. And because it is new we drive it faster and more. And how fuel, environmentally friendly is that?

Then you have to junk the junker. Recycling? Well, that is again an energy load. And here in the Maritimes we power that with diesel, our friendly CO2 belching power corps will be happy to oblige with a reduced power rate to make it all the more attractive to big business. Add to that the rusting hulks that inevitably find their outside the recycling scenario, slowly leeching their toxic wastes back in the environment and you get a picture of this so called “green” initiative. Call it what it is, a financial boast for the auto sector and a stimulus package for business on the backs of the consumer, where environmental concerns are pushed to a back burner, relabeled and spun till the only “green” left in all of this is the business and political green!