If only they reacted this fast during Katrina, maybe New Orleans wouldn’t have been destroyed.  Gotta keep your priorities straight though.

New Orleans, politics | 1 Comment »

Turns out while all of us have been sitting on our hands and fretting about climate change, somebody’s actually gone out and found a solution. That’s right, the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association has been working overtime on this problem and has come up with a groundbreaking plan. It seems that everything is going to be alright if we just BUY MORE CARS. That’s right. It’s the old cars which pollute…the new ones are squeaky clean! So if you love the planet, you need a shiny new car.

On the CVMA website you can read “Driving for Clean Air”, where you’ll learn that “a vehicle produced today is 12 times cleaner than one produced in 1993, and 37 times cleaner than one produced in 1983″. A look under the hood (sorry) shows, however, that what is being compared are not emissions, but the legal emissions standards….which of course are more lax for cars which have been on the road for 14 and 24 years than for new cars.

The website also features plan details under the heading “An Auto Green Plan”. The bold strategy laid out here features:

• New Green Technologies

  (hybrids, fuel cells, government grants for R&D

• Cleaner Fuel Choices For Canadians

  (mainly ethanol — shores up the Western support I suppose)

• Getting old polluting vehicles off the road

  (sweet, sweet profit)

• Greening the Government Fleets

  (delicious new public sector contracts)

• Changing Our Own Driving Behaviour

  (This one is really the best one. I can’t really do it justice, so I beg you to go read it yourself. Suffice it to say that less driving is not part of the plan. Think “accelerate more slowly” and “maintain correct tire pressure”)

As the CVMA says: “Believe or not, we can reduce emissions with every new car.”

canada, global warming, science | 1 Comment »