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Darren New wrote:
> Actually, it's a personal observation. I've traveled a lot compared to
> most Europeans,
Sorry. I don't know where my head is today. I meant "I've traveled a lot
compared to most Americans." I have no idea how much Europeans tend to
travel outside of Europe. That mistake of course makes me sound much
more arrogant.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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> To be fair, there's yellowish smog over many cities these days, usually as
> seen from the top of the bridges coming into the city. LA is the reason
> california passed stricter car pollution laws than anyone else in the
> world 20 years ago.
How come people can still drive around Hummers that do 10mpg then?
> So, yeah, we're working on it. One problem is that Kyoto doesn't put
> limits on pollution, but on energy use. If you find a way to burn coal
> completely without pollution, you're still screwed.
Kyoto sets targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Here's a map of who's in and who's out:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Kyoto_Protocol_participation_map_2005.png
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scott wrote:
> How come people can still drive around Hummers that do 10mpg then?
Either they are trucks and so exempt, or they're using a lot of gasoline
without polluting.
The Prius, I'm told, actually puts out cleaner air from the exhaust than
the general air in LA. Kind of a negative polluter.
> Kyoto sets targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
> Here's a map of who's in and who's out:
>
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Kyoto_Protocol_participation_map_2005.png
Yep. And China pollutes more than the USA. :-) And?
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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>> How come people can still drive around Hummers that do 10mpg then?
>
> Either they are trucks and so exempt
Aren't there limits for trucks too?
> The Prius, I'm told, actually puts out cleaner air from the exhaust than
> the general air in LA. Kind of a negative polluter.
Yeh I guess you can work that out, btw there was some big issue here when a
Toyota advert for the Prius was banned. It claimed something like "4x less
pollution" but they compared it with some hideous totally non-comparable
car. Of course that sparked off lots of people to actually check how clean
it was compared to other European cars. It turns out that actually there
are a lot of cars (in Europe at least) that get better fuel economy and give
out less pollution.
> Yep. And China pollutes more than the USA. :-)
Only just, and their population is considerably larger than yours (plus they
make everything for the rest of the world) so it's hardly reason to not take
any action in your own country. It's not just me, but everyone here has the
impression that the USA is doing very little to cut down on pollution, maybe
it's just the impression that Bush gives when he talks about such things, or
that they always choose to interview certain people on the TV here, I don't
know.
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scott wrote:
>>> How come people can still drive around Hummers that do 10mpg then?
>>
>> Either they are trucks and so exempt
>
> Aren't there limits for trucks too?
I imagine so, but it's not "average over fleet" as far as I know, which
is what was hurting the auto manufacturers. If they wanted to build 15%
large cars, they had to build 15% of their cars using less gas than was
physically possible. With trucks, all the trucks can be right at the
limit. Apparently, many in Congress own trucking companies.
> turns out that actually there are a lot of cars (in Europe at least)
> that get better fuel economy and give out less pollution.
I wouldn't be surprised. I was kind of disappointed that the Prius will
actually sacrifice mileage in order to reduce pollution.
>> Yep. And China pollutes more than the USA. :-)
>
> Only just, and their population is considerably larger than yours (plus
> they make everything for the rest of the world) so it's hardly reason to
> not take any action in your own country.
Well, we *do* take action in our own country, just not due to Europe's
direction. :-) And the pollution from China is getting worse as they
move into 1st world status. (As in, they're not quite there yet, so they
don't have the luxury of wasting money on stuff like pollution controls
yet, but they're starting to use energy like a first world country does.)
> It's not just me, but everyone
> here has the impression that the USA is doing very little to cut down on
> pollution, maybe it's just the impression that Bush gives when he talks
> about such things, or that they always choose to interview certain
> people on the TV here, I don't know.
Certainly all the interviewers have agendas. Part of the problem is
that the USA already paid a whole lot of attention to pollution stuff
like 30 years ago. We put scrubbers on all the smoke stacks, treat the
coal before burning it, and so on. We use a lot of energy, but the
country is spread out, large and a fairly big population.
We could probably do better by reducing the amount of energy we use, but
that's not something Kyoto is going to be able to cause to happen, methinks.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Darren New wrote:
> Certainly all the interviewers have agendas. Part of the problem is
> that the USA already paid a whole lot of attention to pollution stuff
> like 30 years ago. We put scrubbers on all the smoke stacks, treat the
> coal before burning it, and so on. We use a lot of energy, but the
> country is spread out, large and a fairly big population.
>
> We could probably do better by reducing the amount of energy we use, but
> that's not something Kyoto is going to be able to cause to happen,
> methinks.
>
On the other hand, what we "do" do is spottier than hell some times,
like the fact that we allow sales of vehicles that would "never" pass
either safety or smog checks in Arizona, but a few hundred miles away
(or where I live, more like less than fifty), on the other side of the
California border, you would have the vehicle declared either illegal to
drive, failing to meet standards, and/or unsafe. Why? Solely because
Pheonix isn't LA, and therefor no one gives a shit if 500,000 thousand
cars produce "breathable" smog, while the same per capita population in
LA would be more like 5 million cars, and you would need a damn knife to
cut through the shit if the same poorly maintained and non-California
Smog Requirement approved cars where there.
Now, some people don't think this is a problem, but.. if 100,000 people
from surrounding states, where the laws are looser, all decide to take a
trip to the LA area for vacation as the same time, well, WTF good does
having the laws do in the first place?
Its a bit like the description Penn & Teller had about some aspects of
the Endangered Species Act. Some bird on one side of a mountain is
"endangered", because there where 10,000 of them, but now are only 5,000
of them, but on the other side of the mountain there are 10,000,000 of
the damn things, because they "prefer" to live there in the first place.
We do the same thing with "pollution". Protect the places no sane person
would want to live "because of it", from too much of it, but don't do
anything at all about all the people pumping out 5-20 times as much from
their own vehicles in some area that is "not" as polluted. Or.. At least
not until it becomes so bad that people start dying from it.
We even get that logic here, where I live, where the "increase" of a
certain type of boat, which remains running all the time when on shore,
manages to kill a few people each year, including kids, so where are
"now" strict rules saying you "can't" run them. Rules that where not in
place *until* people started to die from it, and which are still not,
apparently, sufficient to stop something that wasn't happening "at all"
5 years ago. If we hadn't had a few weeks where 1-2 people died a week,
a few years back, the ordinances would "still" not be on the beaches, or
patrols going on to keep them turned off.
In most of the US, people don't "see" an obvious problem, the "Fed"
isn't doing a damn thing, other than, often, undermining protections, or
refusing to implement ones that are what experts consider "strict
enough", and thus, most places, no one is passing local laws to deal
with it either. End result -> other than in major cities, you could
probably burn tires 24/7, and as long as some bird or lizard wasn't
"endangered" in the area by it, or the wind shifted enough to annoy the
nearest neighbor, the state wouldn't give a damn.
Or, at least that is the "common" perception that people have, when they
see the government constantly arguing for why it "shouldn't" introduce
stricter policies, and make "everyone" follow them, then a week later
hear about some morons, like the ones in Florida, who successfully
convinced the local government that swamp land produced "pollutants", so
it would be better as a parking lot.
--
void main () {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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> I wouldn't be surprised. I was kind of disappointed that the Prius will
> actually sacrifice mileage in order to reduce pollution.
Yeh I was surprised, because the pollution levels are quite low for a car
that size (what I saw was that only a couple of cars beat it, which were
smaller). But then the gas mileage is really not that good compared to what
a lot of cars here can do. Maybe they could work with VW or BMW to use one
of their really efficient diesel engines, that is where the European
manufacturers have made great strides in the last decade.
> We could probably do better by reducing the amount of energy we use, but
> that's not something Kyoto is going to be able to cause to happen,
> methinks.
Well it seems to have helped a lot of other countries reduce their pollution
quite significantly, whether they would have done it without Kyoto I don't
know. The fact is that Kyoto won't let you get away with not reducing
pollution levels very easily.
If LA has such a bad smog situation then why not ban all cars that produce
over a certain amount of pollution to improve the air quality? You
pioneered with the emission controls 30 years ago, but you seem to have been
overtaken by most other developed countries now (eg here you can't enter
most cities without the correct colour sticker on your car, which depends on
how much pollution it makes). If the pollution situation gets bad in a
city, then they can simply ban everyone with bigger cars from entering to
keep within the air quality limits.
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scott wrote:
> The fact is that Kyoto won't let you get away with
> not reducing pollution levels very easily.
I suppose. I don't really know enough about it to pursue that too much
farther.
> If LA has such a bad smog situation then why not ban all cars that
> produce over a certain amount of pollution to improve the air quality?
Because we're a federated democracy. California isn't allowed to pass
laws like that. When the founders founded the country, they wrote into
the constitution rules preventing states from interfering in the laws of
other states.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Darren New [mailto:dne### [at] san rrcom]
> Because we're a federated democracy. California isn't allowed to pass
> laws like that. When the founders founded the country, they wrote
into
> the constitution rules preventing states from interfering in the laws
> of
> other states.
Of course, there's nothing to keep CALIFORNIA from passing a law like
that :)
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com
>
> --
> Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Chambers wrote:
> Of course, there's nothing to keep CALIFORNIA from passing a law like
> that :)
California did that a long time ago. Indeed, they bought so many
low-pollution cars that Japan just gave up on making a different set for
California, so it kind of seeped out into the rest of the country anyway.
But California isn't allowed to set up customs between states, nor bar
residents of other states from entering, and I suspect saying "you're
allowed in but your car is banned" would count as a customs.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
The NFL should go international. I'd pay to
see the Detroit Lions vs the Roman Catholics.
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