Fact: Older Vehicles Pollute Less

I've always said that common sense isn't as common as it use to be. Under the category of common sense, I would put the following statements:

People who use older vehicles (12-15+ years) tend to have less disposable income to spend on transportation.

If that statement makes sense to you, perhaps the following might as well:

People who own older vehicles have less disposable income available for transportation and because older vehicles are more likely to suffer a serious breakdown, these vehicles tend to be driven significantly less than new, or newer, vehicles.

As John Baird gets ready to announce a spending spree on retiring "older vehicles", Environment Canada actually realized that the 2005 Canadian Vehicle Survey said just what I did; older vehicles are driven less than newer ones. They also came to the following realization:

"While older vehicles produce more than their fair share of air pollutants, they produce fewer than average GHG emissions because Canadians tend to drive them less."

There's an important snippet to pay attention to in that previous statement: "they produce fewer than average GHG emissions".

Environment Canada goes on to say that "older vehicles emit fewer greenhouse gases - an average of 2.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide compared to 3.8 tonnes for a newer vehicle, annually."

So why is our Federal Government getting ready to announce a $90 million program to get older vehicles off the road? Well, being a cynic, I would say that rather than tackling the heavy polluters like coal-fired generating plants and industry, low-income earners are an easy target. It also allows our government to strut like peacocks without really doing anything other than wasting more of our money. Another reason is because auto industry analyst, Dennis Desrosiers gets plenty of media time by using derogatory terms like "old smokers" and "beater" that he claims are belching pollutants at alarming rates and destroying our environment. Personally, I blame political posturing and the spewing of hot air, but that's beside the point. By announcing a system to get older vehicles off the road, Baird gets to appease industry analysts like Desrosier and the industry itself. The old "Big 3" weren't too happy with our government over their ill-conceived ecoAUTO program that promoted companies like Toyota while punishing companies that continue to roll out inefficient vehicles at ever-increasing rates, so it almost looks like Baird has been sent in to make the government look industry-friendly. As a sidenote, I called the ecoAUTO plan ill-conceived because one (in my mind, stupid) rebate was for poor mileage flex fuel cars that are capable of burning ethanol; a product that is only available at 2 or 3 stations in all of Canada. Please refer to my previous entry on ethanol and my first statement above on common sense.

Getting back to Desrosier; he even goes so far as to recommend "a large bounty on older vehicles" (DesRosiers Automotive Reports - Vol. 15, Issue 7) and that "keeping these old 'war horses' around is also at the root of the quality perception issue that continues to plaque GM, Ford, and Daimler Chrysler." (DesRosiers Observations - Vol. 21, Issue 7). Again, refer to my first statement. Personally, I would blame actual quality issues for GM, Ford, and Chrysler's quality perception problems, not older vehicles, but hey - that's just me.

So: older vehicles pollute less and they are driven less (and therefore use less fossil fuels). Yet, John Baird and Dennis Desrosier want these vehicles off the road and use derogatory terms in an effort to make their statements more grandiose. Meanwhile, Transport Canada is still giving rebates to flex-fuel vehicles that would normally be punished with a guzzler levy - and the rebate is because they use a fuel (E85) that you can't buy in 99.9999% of the country.

Makes sense to me.