As welcome as any advance is in the fight to save the environment, Canada's recent legislation on emissions is like trying to stop the spread of sexually transmitted diseases by getting the condom makers to improve on their 95 percent reliability record and leaving millions of people to continue their totally unprotected ways.
While forcing the automakers to continue their efforts to stop their new products from polluting the air, in other words, the government took no steps to deal with the pollution from old cars, which is much, much worse than what comes out of new models.
To give you some idea of how far vehicles have come in the 30 years since pollution became a popular public concern, consider that technology has reduced the emissions of 1975 by 99 percent, which means cars are about 100 times cleaner than they were then.
That has got to make you wonder why the government isn't making more of an effort to get rid of old vehicles that are creating the same amount of pollution (or probably even more) than 100 new ones.
No reason not to hold the car companies' feet to the fire on even cleaner future vehicles, of course, but those changes won't begin to substantially change the air for many years because of the millions of older vehicles on the road along with them.
Canadian auto analyst Dennis DesRosiers has worked out some of the numbers on this issue, and they're telling.
''Kyoto stipulations require participating countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by six percent by 2008 to 2012 from the base year of 1990,'' DesRosiers explains. But, ''our government has arbitrarily decided that the automotive sector has to improve their emissions by 25 percent in this period, which is a number picked out of mid-air.''
Encouraging consumers to purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles is certainly important, DesRosiers says. ''But even if consumers were by some stroke of magic to begin immediately purchasing vehicles that are 25 percent more fuel efficient, it would take from 20 to as many as 30 years for the entire fleet of vehicles on the road to become this much more fuel efficient.''
These clean new models have to try to overcome the pollution of the 19 million units that are currently in operation in Canada, and it's not like those older models are going away quickly.
''The survival rates for these vehicles are very high,'' DesRosiers explains. ''Indeed 50 percent of the vehicles purchased 15 years ago are still on the road today. A quarter of the light trucks are still on the road after 20 years of operation. It takes between 20 and 25 years for the entire fleet of vehicles to turn over.''
This is the situation that causes DesRosiers to wonder if it wouldn't be better for the government ''to focus on getting older vehicles off the road? The 'rated' fuel efficiency of the older vehicles is less than new vehicles but more importantly because of poor maintenance practices, older vehicles operate far below their 'rated' efficiency.''
DesRosiers goes on to point out that there would be other important benefits from a government effort to help Canadians get rid of old vehicles and buy new ones.
''By getting older vehicles off the road the environment would benefit,'' DesRosiers notes, ''and the car companies would be able to sell more vehicles and address their profitability issue.''
As smart as he believes this initiative would be, DesRosiers says he ''suspect this would never happen because even though our governments want to retain all the manufacturing jobs associated with the automobile sector, it does nothing to encourage consumers to buy the products workers are making. High taxes, high fees and now misplaced policies like Kyoto all result in keeping the market for vehicles sluggish.''
While forcing the automakers to continue their efforts to stop their new products from polluting the air, in other words, the government took no steps to deal with the pollution from old cars, which is much, much worse than what comes out of new models.
To give you some idea of how far vehicles have come in the 30 years since pollution became a popular public concern, consider that technology has reduced the emissions of 1975 by 99 percent, which means cars are about 100 times cleaner than they were then.
That has got to make you wonder why the government isn't making more of an effort to get rid of old vehicles that are creating the same amount of pollution (or probably even more) than 100 new ones.
No reason not to hold the car companies' feet to the fire on even cleaner future vehicles, of course, but those changes won't begin to substantially change the air for many years because of the millions of older vehicles on the road along with them.
Canadian auto analyst Dennis DesRosiers has worked out some of the numbers on this issue, and they're telling.
''Kyoto stipulations require participating countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by six percent by 2008 to 2012 from the base year of 1990,'' DesRosiers explains. But, ''our government has arbitrarily decided that the automotive sector has to improve their emissions by 25 percent in this period, which is a number picked out of mid-air.''
Encouraging consumers to purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles is certainly important, DesRosiers says. ''But even if consumers were by some stroke of magic to begin immediately purchasing vehicles that are 25 percent more fuel efficient, it would take from 20 to as many as 30 years for the entire fleet of vehicles on the road to become this much more fuel efficient.''
These clean new models have to try to overcome the pollution of the 19 million units that are currently in operation in Canada, and it's not like those older models are going away quickly.
''The survival rates for these vehicles are very high,'' DesRosiers explains. ''Indeed 50 percent of the vehicles purchased 15 years ago are still on the road today. A quarter of the light trucks are still on the road after 20 years of operation. It takes between 20 and 25 years for the entire fleet of vehicles to turn over.''
This is the situation that causes DesRosiers to wonder if it wouldn't be better for the government ''to focus on getting older vehicles off the road? The 'rated' fuel efficiency of the older vehicles is less than new vehicles but more importantly because of poor maintenance practices, older vehicles operate far below their 'rated' efficiency.''
DesRosiers goes on to point out that there would be other important benefits from a government effort to help Canadians get rid of old vehicles and buy new ones.
''By getting older vehicles off the road the environment would benefit,'' DesRosiers notes, ''and the car companies would be able to sell more vehicles and address their profitability issue.''
As smart as he believes this initiative would be, DesRosiers says he ''suspect this would never happen because even though our governments want to retain all the manufacturing jobs associated with the automobile sector, it does nothing to encourage consumers to buy the products workers are making. High taxes, high fees and now misplaced policies like Kyoto all result in keeping the market for vehicles sluggish.''