permaculture

["Lee Flier" <lflier@mindspring.com>]

======= 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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