4 — Wednesday, September 26. 1990 - North Shore News

Hibernia will
help Nild. and

harm the

THE BIG battle of the 90s
will be fought over the car.

The reason for this is, of
course, the Greenhouse Effect.
Unless the insatiable human ap-
petite for automotive freedom can
be curbed, or at least satisfied
with an entirely different source
of energy than fossil fuels, we will
have pushed the biosphere too far,
and will be caught in a runaway
overheating of the planet.

The current tensions in the
Mideast are but an early round in
this battle. They also constitute 2
distant front, more a symptom
than a cause. The cause is to be
found in the heartlands of the in-
dustrialized and rapidly develop-
ing nations.

And it is on the home front that
the main opening skirmishes arc
being fought — and, in Canada’s
case, lost.

In the True North, we see that
an ecologicatly-blind federal gov-
ernment is pouring billions of
dollars into the opening up of the
Hibernia oil fields of f New-

_foundiand.

The purpose of this exercise is
purely and simply traditional
porkbarrel regionai politics: Set’s
make jobs in Newfoundland
through subsidization of multina-
tional corporations.

If I’ve got this wrong, please
correct me.

Apart from the inevitability of
further oil spills — either directly
at the oil rigs or indirectly in the
process of shipping the stuff —
where, pray tell, does Ottawa
think the CO2 emissions from all
those zillions of gallons of pet-
roleum, once burned, are going to
end up?

In the atmosphere, boys.

And what is really depressing is
the fact that there is no serious
political opposition to Hibernia.
For any federal party to oppose
subsidies to Newfoundland is like
going wee-wee on the flag. Just
not done.

In the United States, where op-
position to such ecological
madness actually exists, the main
battles are being fought in
Washington, D.C., and in
California.

On Capitol Hill, pro-business
forces are waging a tough
rearguard action to prevent the
Environment Protection Agency
from really moving to prevent
global warming, since the kind of
action required is so pervasive that
the EPA, if it was to do its job,
would have to intervene massively
at the economic, social, scientific
and political levels.

In California, the ‘*Big Green”’
initiative — Proposition 128 —
stands an excellent chance of be-
ing approved by the voters in
November. For openers, it would
ban Hibernia-style oil develop-
ment along the coast.

It would also mandate the
lowering of CO2 emissions by 20
per cent by the year 2000, a move
which most climatologists say is
the absolute minimum we have to
attain just to maintain the current
level of atmospheric pollution,
and, presumably, the same rate of
warming.

In fact, as Michael Walsh,
former head of the EPA, points
out in Global Warming, The
Greenpeace Report, **merely
holding the line at today’s high
CO2 emission levels is far from
sufficient to address global-warm-
ing concerns ... If the goal is to
stabilize greenhouse gas concen-
trations in the atmosphere at
present levels, cuts in CO2 emis-
sions of more than 60 per cent are
needed immediately.”

There is only ane way to lower

world

Bab
Hunter

ECOLOGIC

CO2 emissions, and that is to cut
fuel consumption.

The inevitable starting-point is
the automobile, which is the single
greatest source of air pollution,
including carbon monoxide, car-
bon dioxide, hydrocarbons,
nitrogen oxides, and
chlorofluoracarbons.

For every gallon of gasoline you
burn, you produce six pounds of
carbon or 22 pounds of CO2.A
single tank of gasoline can pro-
duce between 300.and 400 pounds
of CO2 when burned. It adds up
to so much every year worldwide
that it can only be measured in
Exajoules and quads.

There are two important points
to consider about the car. The
first is that the global population
is expected to double, compared
with 1960 levels, within a mere 10
years, with most of the increase
occurring in cities, which means,
any way you look at it, a massive
increase in the number of autos.
The average annual global in-
crease in the number of cars since
1950 has been 5.9 per cent.

Second point: left to its own
devices, the motor vehicle industry
has shown no inclination to adopt
state-of-the-art pollution controls
and advanced-efficiency techno-
logy.

In fact, according to Michael
Walsh, since 1988 new cars have
shown a six per cent weight gain
and a 10 per cent increase in
horsepower, while fuel-efficiency
standards have not improved at all
since eight years earlier.

Bold solutions are needed des-
perately. Nobody wants to face it,
but the most effective way to
reduce fuel consumption is to
raise the price of gasoline. Euro-
peans already pay twice or three
times as much as Canadians and
Americans — and their consump-
tion is considerably less, as a
result. :

In addition to much higher
taxes on gasoline, we necd to br-
ing in vehicle taxes tied to fuel
consumption, both at the time of
sale and annually.

Road pricing — nothing less
than tolls, I’m afraid — is another
essential step, along with perma-
nent barriers in some areas based,
again, on fuel consumption levels.

Finally, there will have to be
parking taxes and restrictions bas-
ed on fuel efficiency.

At the moment, it sounds like
political suicide for any party to
advocate such moves. Yet they are
already being legislated in Europe,
they are coming in America, and
they will become reality here in
Canada much sooner than you
think — not because of visionary
government, but because the case
against a lack of action to prevent
the Greenhouse Efteet is so swiftly
becoming irresistible.

Neat: why nukes aren't the an-
swer.

LS SE

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