WeAreThem

Help for Global Warming

I have two simple suggestions to help lower our greenhouse gas output in this country, and probably western society as a whole.

This first is predicated upon the premise that it takes more energy(=greenhouse gas output in our current state) to manufacture a car than the car itself will burn up in it’s entire lifetime!

Can anyone confirm this? I suspect it is quite true, but verifiable documentation to that effect would be nice. Please point us that way if you know of any.

Think of it though: Add up all the energy output from extracting and refining the raw materials into the  metals, glass, and plastic, transporting the raw materials, fabricating them into raw sheet metal, windows, steel, plastic molding etc. Then the gas burned by the raw material and factory workers to get to work, the factory itself, the administrative offices and all the energy expended by all the ancillary employees, their gas to get to work, and everything else involved in producing a car.

I’d be quite shocked if it DIDN’T end up being considerably more than  the amount of energy burned by the car itself in its lifetime when calculated on a per-car basis.

Therefore it’s pointless to talk about more efficient cars if we must contantly expend all this energy(=CO2 in most cases) to keep making new ones over and over.

I propose legislation giving tax breaks and other incentives to car manufacturers for making spare parts cheaply available to car owners for many years after a car has been manufactured. There would obviously have to be a cut off date - it may not be worth it(carbon emission-wise) keeping that ‘78 Crown-Royal on the road, but for newer cars it makes a lot of sense.

Furthermore, I propose the possibility of mandating that cars be engineered in a modular fashion so that the separate components can be easily(relatively) swapped out once entropy has its way with the wearable parts.

This gives the car owner more opportunities to keep the car they already have up and running rather than go buy a new one out of fear of a breakdown and costly repair. All necessary repairs/maintenance to keep a given model running indefinitely would be documented.

Now the car owner has a choice: If she has the space and wants to save the money, she has all the information and parts(modules?) available to keep the car running perpetually. Alternatively, she knows at any given time what the car needs/will need to keep it running so she can shop around to find a service provider that will do it at the best price.

This has another benficial side effect - eliminating the “black box” effect that’s all too common at automotive repair shops. You know the one - where the mechanic diagnoses the car’s problem(s) and then comes out and tells you that the gehoozawhitsit behind the three handled family gradunza has to be changed, and at considerable expense.  Not knowing what a gehoozawhatsit is, the owner has little choice but to pay for it whether the car needs it or not.  This happens all too often.

Lets face it, the reason why many or even most people go buy new cars as often as they do is because they fear breakdowns and believe that a new car will provide a higher reliability factor.

What I’m proposing here is essentially an ongoing car recycling/refurbishing program.

This would also involve requiring that the major auto manufacturers to put the repair manuals and everything a person would need to keep their car running indefinitely out on the internet.

I call it the automotive accountability and repairability assurance act.

The major car companies will DESPISE this. They make much if not most of their money(on new cars) by exploiting this fear of an unreliable vehicle. That and making an actual unreliable vehicle which they then repeatedly fleece the consumer for repairs thereof after the warranty has expired. I’ve heard some say that they actually make a lot more money off the parts and repairs than the car itself. I don’t know that I buy that, but if it’s true, then this plan should make good business sense since it will rely heavily on new and remanufactured parts, which presumably would require somewhat less energy output than making a whole new car.

Many foreign car companies took advantage of the inherent unreliability(by comparison to today’s standards) in American cars in the seventies, eighties, and even nineties by producing actual reliable vehicles which would go over 100,000 miles routinely without much except for simple oil changes and tuneups.

So the free market did help some in this instance, but it’s not enough if we’re going to actually try and do something about the level of CO2 and other greenhouse gas we put out.

If we’re going to get serious and actually attempt to start making real improvements in how we expend energy, we’re going to have to make some hard declarations like this.

I’ve never heard anyone through all the global warming hype mention any ideas for keeping cars running longer than they currently do. If we can require a certain level of fuel economy by law for new cars, why not a repairability standard?

The talk is always about making the cars more efficient(a worthy goal in itself), but never about about making them more repairable so we don’t have to make as many of them in the first place.

The auto makers REALLY don’t want you to think about that idea.

But imagine this: Keeping a car running nearly indefinitely. Passing vehicles from one generation to the next, new vehicles only being purchased when people WANT a new car(basically a luxury rather than a necessity - nothing wrong with that). As opposed to buying one  out of fear because they are afraid their existing one will break.

I’ll get to the other idea in another post.