Not all cars pollute Kern's air equally

[The Straight Story]

snip:
www.cleancarsforkids.org

According to the site, among the most polluting cars of the 2006 models in Bakersfield are the Ford 250 Econoline, the Chrysler Town & Country, the Dodge Ram 1500 Pickup and the Chevrolet K2500 Avalanche. Those cars may be two or three times as polluting as the cleanest-running vehicles.

But they're still not as polluting as older models.

Some 6-year-old cars can be as much as 17 times more polluting than the cleanest-running vehicle.

A 2000 BMW 750i Luxury Protection is 24 times more polluting than the cleanest-running large car, according to the site. The popular 2004 Hummer H2 is 28 times more polluting.

A 1999 Toyota Camry is 53 times more polluting and a 1996 Volkswagen Jetta GLX is 93 times more polluting than its cleanest-running car counterpart.

The study also points out the cars least harmful to Bakersfield's air quality, such as the 2000 Chevrolet Impala, a 2004 Saturn Vue or 1998 Ford Ranger, which is only three times more polluting than the cleanest truck on the road.

"We want to start getting people to think about air pollution as a public health issue," Walker said. "On a practical level we want to give people information that will help them make smart choices."

http://www.bakersfield.com/102/story/60614.html

[Warpy]

1. My old enough to vote Ranger always came in on the lowest

end of the range for hydrocarbons and CO2. It never even registered CO. It looked like a total piece of crap, but I maintained the hell out of that engine.

It's also not what you drive but how you drive it. People who drive 100 miles each way from and to the exurbs five days a week are going to add more pollution that somebody who lives in the inner city and drives half a mile to the grocery but walks or takes public transit to work.

It would be nice to get all the poorly tuned shitboxes that are weeks away from needing a ring job off the road, but people who drive those things are too damned poor to do any better. They're just barely hanging on as it is.

This is another reason we need to raise WAGES. If we want people to do things like upgrade their vehicles in the name of efficiency and lowered pollution, we're going to have to allow them the means to do so. Just pointing fingers and complaining about the problem aren't going to do squat.