To answer that question, I’ve taken three cities and three rural areas in New York State and brought them up on Google Maps.
You can draw your own conclusions on what living arrangement is more “green”, although I think this orthoimagetry from Google speaks louder then words alone.
The other day I was stuck behind one of my neighbor’s 1958 Ford Fairlane, on a hot sunny day. A beautiful classic car, it really stunk of partially burnt hydrocarbons, as was the case of most cars from the pre-automobile pollution control era.
I was curious how much progress we’ve made an automobiles in 2010, versus the pre-control era of model years 1968 and earlier. In 40 years, we’ve taken some serious steps to reduce the tailpipe emissions of our automobile fleet.
The four major pollutants from automobiles are nitrous oxides (NOx) that create smog, carbon monoxide (CO) which is a deadly human posion that replaces oxygen in human blood and causes heart attacks, particulate matter (PM) or soot that coats human lungs and creates smog, and carbon dioxide (CO2) that is acidifying our oceans and inducing climate change.
Nitrogen Oxides – 3.00 gram/mi
Carbon Monoxide – 39.00 gram/mi
Particulate Matter – 12.80 gram/mi *
Lead – 0.06 gram/mi *
Carbon Dioxide – 840.00 gram/mi *
* Estimates based on the following, previously used to test emissions.
Total Hydrocarbons – 8.80 gram/mi
Miles Per Gallon – 12.5 miles/gallon
Lead Per Gallon – 0.80 gram/gallon
Nitrogen Oxides – 0.03 gram/mi
Carbon Monoxide – 2.10 gram/mi
Particulate Matter – 0.01 gram/mi
Lead – 0.00 gram/mi *
Carbon Dioxide – 329.00 gram/mi *
* Estimates based on the following, previously used to test emissions.
Miles Per Gallon – 27.5 miles per gallon
Lead – Gasoline is 100% lead free now due to catalytic converters being poisoned by leaded gasoline. Lead has been replaced by ethanol and synthetic anti-knock oxygent agents such as MTBE and ETBE.
Here is the improvement in pollution control in the past 40 years for automobiles in times.
Nitrous Oxides – You can drive a 2010 model year car 100 miles and create the same amount of nitrous oxides as a 1968 model year car puts out per mile.
Carbon Monoxide – You can drive a 2010 model year car 18.5 miles and create the same amount of carbon monoxide as a 1968 model year car puts out per mile.
Particulate Matter – You can drive a 2010 model year car 1287 miles and create the same amount of particulate matter as a 1968 model year car puts out per mile.
Carbon Dioxide – You can drive a 2010 model year car 2.1 miles and create the same amount of carbon dioxide as a 1968 model year car puts out per mile.
The fact is we’ve done a lot to clean up the automobile fleet. Today’s cars are nothing like the polluting cars of yesteryear, although on one key pollutant — carbon dioxide, we have a long ways to go. Carbon dioxide, while a very dilute pollutant, is produced in massive quantities by automobiles. Modern cars still produce over 320 grams per mile of carbon dioxide, and reducing that will require advanced technologies, many yet to be invented.
Yet, back in 1968, few would have believed that we would reduce nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, or particulate mater to such a great extent as we have today.
There are many people who consider themselves to be environmentalists. Yet, these people have very diverse beliefs and come from very diverse backgrounds.
On specific issues, environmentalists often disagree. One environmentalist might view the issue of providing pollution free power through hydroelectric as an acceptable cost to a damaged salmon population. Another might very well disagree.
What we can delimitate some fundamental processes that the environmentalist must go through to reach his rational conclusion:
In one way or another, you could argue that all environmentalists are seeking the best use of our limited natural resources and our limited land. In contrast to our natural resources, the human imagination is unlimited and we can find solutions to our problems.
Indeed, environmentalists seek the best use of the land. They want to see uses that are:
We should seek environmental policies that not only protect our diverse species but also protect human dignity. We need an environment where:
What’s good for our environment is indeed good for our economy, as our economy is based on our environment. We must indeed be liberal in our quest to embrace new technologies and ideas that will improve our environment, but also conservative in respecting our natural environment around us.