Greenhouse gases

Instead of a book review, today I offer some thoughts about the situation we face with respect to the climate crisis. This just reflects my limited reading and understanding of the problem, not an expert opinion.

The eve of the shambolic Glasgow climate summit seems like an appropriate time to weigh in with some musings. On billboards, on line, in print magazines and newspapers, and on TV, we are constantly bombarded with endless commercials by all the big automakers glamourizing the use of their fossil fuel-powered vehicles. I have never seen such an advertisement for an all-electric car, nor even for a plug-in hybrid.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the average passenger vehicle in that country produces about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year of use, not counting the amount produced by its factory production and the extraction, refining, and transport of the fuel. And this does not include the carcinogenic nitrous oxides spewed from diesel engines. Certainly some greenhouse gases are produced in the manufacturing of all products, but electric vehicles emit none on the roadways and even if the ultimate source of electricity is coal, gas, or oil, the efficiency of electric vehicles would still vastly reduce the net emissions, compared to fossil fuel vehicles.

While conflicted governments have been fiddling around the edges of the problem with regulations to decrease emissions by increasing the efficiency of burning fossil fuels, pretending to take the climate crisis seriously, they have provided support to the fossil fuel industry in various forms. According to a recent CBC report, in 2018-2020, Canadian governments and publicly owned entities provided almost $14 billion to this industry, leading the world on a per capita basis, while providing less than $1billion to support renewable energy sources, the least of any of the G7 countries.

Since 1971, Canadian government regulations have banned any advertising of tobacco products and forced producers to provide dire health warnings on all of their products. We are now in a similar situation with cars, the only difference being that the harm from fossil fuel car usage affects all of us, and will affect our children and grandchildren, not just the current users. Why do government regulators not ban advertising of new fossil fuel cars, as they belatedly did for tobacco products, or at the very least require that those commercials provide a warning similar to that required on tobacco products, something along the lines of “Use of this product is harmful to the environment and will contribute to global warming.”? And not just in small print. Then shame all countries with car manufacturing plants to do the same. A chance for Canada to lead the way. This will not resolve the climate crisis but is one small step that we owe to our descendants and a signal to the rest of the world that we are finally taking the problem seriously.