Using Hybrids Way to Prevent Air Pollution From Worsening

Air Pollution, Cars, Carbons and Looking Upstream for Solutions

Air pollution is a serious problem in the world but there are ways to deal with it. In other words, the situation is not hopeless. Yes, a large amount pollution comes from the burning of fossil fuels and emissions such as those from gas engine vehicles. And, true, automakers deliberately do not develop cars that get more than 50 mpg because of the incestuous relationship between the oil industry and the auto manufacturing industry -- both of which profit from more oil consumption, which means fewer gas miles (Naughton). But things don't have to be this way. In fact, there is enough technological innovation out there already just waiting for the right situation in which the so-called "wheel" can be re-invented -- and re-invented in such a way so that the earth is not detrimentally affected by its usage. As Rishi Manchanda notes in his talk on "What Makes us Sick," we must look upstream -- both in the positive and negative sense: we can look outside ourselves to our environment to see what is causing us to suffer from both air pollution and from the monopoly of an industry that cares more for price fixing and profits than it does for the health of its consumers and the planet; and we can look upstream as well for possible solutions to our problem today, which is essentially a double problem -- one of planetary pollution and one of corporate greed. The two do go together but we are not bound to be victimized by either.

Kate Sheppard notes that we can "lose 300 million tons of CO2 in just three weeks" in her essay by the same title. What is her solution? It is indeed an upstream looking solution but looking at how the average consumer of carbon emissions can cut this consumption just like one cuts calories in a dietary intake. Sheppard's solution is to implement a strategy of carbon disclosure so that we can actually see what we are contributing to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that are crippling the planet and affecting our health. Air pollution has been shown to be cancer causing by the World Health Organization -- so it is not just the planet's life that is at stake, or the future of later generations: it is our own health that is being negatively impacted by air pollution from carbon emissions.

Thus, implementation of a system of carbon control and carbon disclosure would be an effective first step at dealing a fatal blow to the industry that has only one concern: profits -- instead of planetary health. The profits need to be taken off center stage and in their place needs to go a regulatory schema that will allow consumers to see exactly how much they are polluting the planet, just as they are able to see how much they are polluting their own bodies when the look on the side of a box of Pop-Tarts and see the list of ingredients and the amounts of fats and sugars that are going into their bodies with each serving. Auto manufacturers would be on the hook with consumers and would have to disclose what they know about their emissions -- and they should know since they are the ones making the vehicles.

This would not necessarily be bad for the auto industry, however (though it probably would not be great for the oil industry, which is already in its death-throes as it suffers from one of the worst oil gluts in history, with room running out all over the planet for storage facilities for all its stockpiled oil barrels full of that which is so lethal to the planet when it is burned). But back to auto industries -- they might find a greater competitive edge if they give consumers what they want. The organic food market has had great success in recent years because it has tapped into the health-conscious consumer and makes it a point of pride to deliver good, solid food to these individuals. It is a competitive market and a positive one because it allows consumers to eat more healthily.

The same could happen with the auto industry as it looks to cultivate and compete in a market where more savvy and educated consumers look to purchase vehicles that get more miles to the gallon and deliver fewer pollutants into the air. Why is Tesla so popular? It is a vehicle that cares about what progressive-minded individuals want -- a car that doesn't kill the planet and other people when it is driven through the release of toxic carcinogens into the atmosphere.

But primarily the main concern here is the health of the planet and the health of the people around us. As Sheppard states, "putting emissions data in the public domain can also bolster legal efforts to tackle climate change" -- which is to say that if the numbers are out there, people will see them, and if people see them and raise havoc the way citizens did more than a hundred years ago when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, which described the horrors of Chicago's meatpacking industry and prompted the federal government to pass the Food and Drug Act of 1906, then we could be looked at an entirely systematic overhaul of an industry that desperately needs to be governed by an entity that cares more about people and the planet that it does about filling its own pocketbook.

So that is one way that looking upstream can help us to get out of ourselves, as Manchanda notes that we should do. It is also a way that by looking outside ourselves and upstream to the primary causes of our situation today that we can better understand why we are where we are and what we can do to fix it. Obviously, separate and apart we cannot fix anything -- but together, acting collectively, within the system of representative government that we have, we can effect meaningful change and work to save our planet from the carcinogens that we emit daily in our lives -- mainly because auto manufacturers refuse to let innovators take the next step and separate car manufacturing from its chain-like dependence upon the oil industry.