A post of frustration. There is always more and more stupid articles about how we are destroying the environment, and yes I agree we are. But journalists are the ones responsible for the general public not taking it seriously.
There was an article on the NZ stuff news website recently complaining about how can NZ meet emissions targets when imports of petrol powered cars are now at an all time high. What a load of complete bollocks and frankly bad scaremongering reporting. For starters newer cars which meet stricter emission standards than the ones they are replacing is a good thing.
What the article completely missed is that it is not the number of cars in the country that is the problem, it is the amount of time the cars engines are running producing fumes.
In my last job there was frequently a need for me to be at my place of work at 2am. The roads at that time are normally clear of traffic except for the odd long-haul truck and I could get from home to work without speeding in 15mins. During rush hour traffic the same trip would take me almost 1hr. So which trip do you think would my one car produce the most emissions from ?.
Of course during rush hour there are thousands of cars at a virtual standstill with their engines running, not just my one.
So it is not the number of cars in a country that contributes to the amount of emissions produced by cars, the biggest cause of car emissions is inadequate road infrastructure that in the example given above forces my car to generate almost four times as much emissions when I use it to get to work during normal business hours, during rush hour.
The roads in NZ are bad. There are some passing lanes up toward Masterton that actually have had the outer (slower) lane closed off completely because the road surface has gotten so bad it is unsafe to drive on. In addition to that there are many roads in the country where the 100Kph speed limit is simply unsafe due to the condition of the roads, there is a section between Wellington and Otaki that is so bad that even though it is signposted as a 100Kph zone everybody slows to 70Kph for a few km to safely get across it, and even at the slower speed the shaking to the car caused by the bad road surface can still vibrate off the car stuck on bird-shit that nothing else could move.
The 100Kph road between pahatanui inlet and the hutt had “temporary speed restriction” signs to 70Kph for over three years because of bad road surface; then they fixed a bit of the road and made 70Kph a new permanent speed limit.
There is also a move in NZ to lower the speed limit in many areas of main highways from 100Kph to 80Kph. Yes doing that will probably decrease the number of crashes caused by the bad roads, and from a political viewpoint it is cheaper than actually fixing the roads that are at least partially responsible for drivers losing control.
The end result of all this is of course that car journeys will be taking longer, resulting in more emissions from the hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks using the roads than would occur if the travel time was shorter.
The only way to reduce traffic emissions is to enable the travel time to be shorter. That of course would involve spending money on fixing and improving the road infrastructure.
But it is cheaper to just lower the speed limits as the roads deteriorate, and politicians always prefer the cheaper option.
Given a choice between curbing carbon emissions or saving a few dollars the government will always chose saving a few dollars.
I would not consider that a problem if the money saved from letting roads deteriorate actually went somewhere useful like the hospital system which has to cope with the messy results of bad roads causing accidents, but to the politicians it’s a few million more into the tax payer funded politician pension scheme plus a few million more they can give in foreign aid to make themselves feel good. Nobody with any financial skills at all with billions in overseas debt would give away millions of taxpayer dollars in foreign aid knowing there will be no return instead of trying to pay off that debt; bad governments unfortunately do.
But this post is about what an idiot any journalist that says increasing number of cars is bad for NZ meeting its emission targets; which is absolute rubbish as the number of cars is irrelevant. No matter how many cars they collect one person can only drive one car at a time, the emissions produced by that car are primarily dependant upon how long the car engine has to keep running to get from A to B. In a country like NZ where the major highways are falling into disrepair needing slower speed limits, and road infrastructure in the cities results in virtually stationary traffic just sitting there producing emissions during rush hour… well it is not the cars that can held responsible for the amount of emissions they produce in this case.
If NZ had world class roads and road infrastructure that allowed cars and trucks to cross the country and get into and out of cites, based on my experience alone in the example of my going to work above, my personal car emissions would be a quarter of what they currently are; and all due to road infrastructure not the car; multiply my experience by the many thousands of cars stuck in that rush hour traffic jam every day. Simply fixing road infrastructure into and out of cities could cut emissions by 75% during the busiest emission period, and once those cars get to their car parks and the drivers are stuck at work for 8hrs no more emissions from those vehicles.
Cars do cause emissions that will affect climate change and peoples health, but in my case at least over 75% of those emissions currently are caused by bad road infrastructure. Don’t blame the cars, it’s not their fault they spend the majority of their time stationary in traffic jams. And when the speed limits are lowered it is not the cars fault it generates more emessions because the journey is longer and the engine has to keep running longer.
My car is a European import, the manual says for safety reasons cruise control cannot be set above 180Kph, although the car can run at 220Kph indefinately without harm (240Kph on sprints). There are almost no roads in NZ I would risk driving above 100Kph on, the best stability handling in the world has difficulty with torn up roads and paint trails (interesting that many parts of the main highways have signs that have been there for decades warning about paint trails, in all those decades no attempt to fix the issue).
Mentioned because it is important to note that in first world countries which the car was designed for the roads allow travel from A-B fairly quickly; third world countries like NZ have to adopt a lower the speed limit policy because disregarding the fact nobody in NZ really needs to get anywhere fast, they simply cannot afford to fix the deteriorating roads to keep the existing speed limit safe.
It is the road conditions in NZ that are causing the majority of emissions from cars and trucks. Any journalist that thinks that writing an article saying increasing car numbers is an issue is simply wrong.
The only way an increase in car numbers can make things worse is if there is also an increase in population numbers to drive them which is also a government issue not a car issue (and a population increase will cause more climate environmental issues than extra cars on the road).
