....The point is that, of any administration (except maybe Warren G. Harding and his Teapot Dome boys), this administration (and especially this Vice-President) has the least incentive imaginable to do anything about any problem related to energy policy. Try to imagine either of these guys in a meeting with the real Chairmen I impersonated on this thread, telling them to sacrifice for the good of the Nation.

It's not a conservative/liberal thing. This is putting Myer Lansky in charge of RICO enforcement. (Not to imply that bought influence in Federal policy is illegal or immoral in any way!)

The culture of large lawns and the need for emission spewing 2 stroke Lawnboys is by far a worse problem....

The concept of Pollution Credits is an old one and has been with us since at least the 90's. Old car people generally don't understand and don't care about it. After all it's much easier to complain than to act, acting is hard work and we as a group have allowed these oppressive schemes to multiply because the work is just too hard, we give up before we even start. If the anti-car crowd had their way, our old cars would be scarped and melted down, forget what we think. You know, it wasn?t that long ago that some Model A Ford owners were giving in and putting catalytic converters on their cars and saying it was a good idea in the process! Pollution Credits are just another way to take our historic vehicles from us. <img src="http://www.aaca.org/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

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The concept of Pollution Credits is an old one and has been with us since at least the 90's. Old car people generally don't understand and don't care about it. After all it's much easier to complain than to act, acting is hard work and we as a group have allowed these oppressive schemes to multiply because the work is just too hard, we give up before we even start. If the anti-car crowd had their way, our old cars would be scarped and melted down, forget what we think. You know, it wasn?t that long ago that some Model A Ford owners were giving in and putting catalytic converters on their cars and saying it was a good idea in the process! Pollution Credits are just another way to take our historic vehicles from us.


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I don't know who this annonymous is, or how annonymous posts get through here now and then, but let's set a few things straight. I'm a professional environmentalist, and although I never worked in an air progaram I certainly worked with them enough to know a thing or two.

Pollution credits were started as a reasonable concept by which the least expensive means could be adopted to produce the best benefit in air quality. They were concieved in the 1980's and were implemented as part of the 1990 Clean Air Act Ammendments. Judging by the tone of your post I'll assume that you don't believe there is an air quality problem anywhere. However, those of us who spent years in post-graduate study on the issue learned a few things here and there, like the fact that at that time 10,000 people were dying of air pollution related premature deaths every year in Los Angeles County alone!

You may snicker now at my unbelievable gullibility at being suckered in on that one! In the mean time I'll understand if you don't know that to me you sound like a plummer instructing a heart surgeon.

Like most policies advanced by one or other of the politcal agendas in this country, the application of the policy is warped by the financial powers that have a stake in it's application. Real environmental groups are NEVER finacial powers. Truthfully the most finacially powerful environmental organizations out there (discounting a few wolves in sheep's clothing we can talk about) run on budgets generally smaller than a few large Super Wal-Marts. And most are much smaller than that, even the ones most of us have heard of.

Pollution credits are being warped in practice. This is done by people who need to justify not making the effort to clean their own emissions. The warpage is done by crushing old cars, and aquiring pollution credits based on wholly absurd assuptions regarding the quality and quantity of use the old cars recieve. Since all pollution measures have to be justified/evaluated by mathematical models that estimate pollutant discharge, one can manipulate the assumptions that are used to model the pollution amelioration to one's own advantage. For instance, you could blame all the pollution in the Denver air shed on one '57 DeSoto if you assume it's being driven enough.

There is no "anti-car crowd". There never has been. There is however a large and well financed anti-pollution controls crowd. They want to "take your car", or more properly take as much of the used resources your car may need as possible. It helps to keep them in Escalades and Bentleys.

As long as there are enough people out there who want to take the easy way out of analyzing this issue, they'll keep crushing cars.

People like Mr. Annonymous here are their best friend.