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  • From: "Lee Flier" <lflier@mindspring.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] on cars
  • Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 10:32:39 -0500



======= At 2003-06-09, 09:08:00 Claude wrote: =======

>Anne Wrote:
>
>> In terms of air polution, modern cars are actually not as responsible as
>> many people think. The main culprits are those horrible engines in lawn
>> mowers, leaf blowers, etc. and diesle engines.
>
>Wow ! Would you have any numbers/sources for this Anne please ?

Actually, Anne's statement is a bit misleading. It's true that small engines
such as those in lawn mowers, leaf blowers, ATV's, etc. emit much more
pollution than cars for the amount of work they do. There are no emissions
standards applied to them, and little attention is paid to efficiency since
the actual amounts of fuel they burn is quite small.

However, since people don't run lawn mowers et al as often as they do cars,
nor burn nearly as much fuel in them, the sum total of the pollution created
by these small engines isn't nearly as much as that created by cars. They
still suck, though. :-)

As for sources, I'd really recommend that every Permie get hold of a book
called "The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices - Practical
Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists," by Michael Brower, PhD and
Warren Leon, Phd. It's an extremely well thought out and well researched
little book. Its basic premise is: what kinds of actions are truly going to
make a difference to the environment and which are just "feel good" measures
which may be a lot of effort for nothing? They came up with several
standards for measuring "effectiveness" which are clearly defined and
sensible, then proceed to rate many common aspects of the industrialized
lifestyle along a scale of how much damage it does in several categories such
as land use, water use, air pollution, water pollution, and greenhouse gases.
Then, alternatives are suggested.

One of the more useful things this book also does is to separate personal
action from government/institutional action. In other words, the book
acknowledges that although there are some personal actions you can take that
will help to protect the environment, there are others which need to be
addressed at the government and corporate levels in order to be effective or
realistic.

Anyway it's a good read, but to get back to the topic there are lots of
numbers comparing emissions from cars to that from small engines, boats, etc.

--Lee

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  • Re: [permaculture] on cars, Lee Flier, 06/09/2003

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