All over the world, environmentalists are going around screaming at everyone who is driving for causing/contributing to global warming. They suggest using the bicycle or walking to your destination instead. OK, fine. That plan may work for colder countries, but what about the tropics? Would anyone want to cycle or walk to work and end up being bathed in a pool of smelly sweat? No!
They too suggest that we can take public transport to reduce carbon emissions and destroy the Earth and blah blah blah... Again, it might work in third-world countries like India, Bangladesh, and all those countries with lots of terrorists. That plan works for them as many people can fit in their buses (some can be on the roof, some can hang on the sides), like even a 100 people. Although these buses cause a terrible lot of pollution (I don't think they passed any emission checks), it is better than have those 100 Bangladeshis driving their old and rusted "cars". And maybe Malaysia (with those terrible Protons and Peroduas) and Russia (Lada, VAZ... (All crap!)). In Singapore, this plan does not work in saving the environment.
In Singapore, the average age of vehicles on the road are about 3 years. That is one of the lowest age in the whole world. That means that Singapore vehicles are very new and of course that means they have passed the strictest of all emission controls. So much that some of the vehicles give out almost no greenhouse gases. A recent research study done in the UK shown that taking the trains are not as environmentally friendly as driving cars. Even if the maximum number of people is fitted into a train, the greenhouse gases emitted is more than that of every passenger on the train driving a car each. This research has shown that developed cities like Singapore do not need to encourage people to take public transport as almost everyone drives a very new car that produces so little greenhouse gases.
Oh, what about buses, you may ask?! Have you seen that disgusting amount of black smoke from the buses you see everyday and the smell of the air at bus stops. That is really called pollution. I suppose the CO2 emitted from 50 cars put together is significantly less than that of a bus!
Another suggestion from environmentalists are having car pools. The idea of car pools are that more people can fit into 1 car and all go to the same place (like 7 school children going to school in a MPV). This is the only suggestion I agree. But I'm not very sure if that is going to help save the environment that much. You see, a car uses significantly more fuel when it is carrying a heavier load. Six extra school children is about 240KG. 1 Adult + 240KG + Another kid adds up to about 400KG. Plus the weight of the car, the load the car engine has to deal with is about 2 tons. Because it is so heavy, more fuel needs to be fed to the engine to produce more horsepower and torque and so the fuel consumption is higher and the average distance per litre of fuel is reduced. Some cars have a very low loading limit too, maybe about 350KG. If this limit is breached, the car is underpowered to tug along such a heavy load, therefore the driver will feel that the car does not have enough power and would maybe jam the accelerator to the floor for more power. When this is done, the engine struggles to give out its maximum power and therefore there will sometimes be much exhaust gases produced.
If the government really wants to save the environment, they can encourage people to drive more economically and not just stomp on the accelerator as a very light foot can save drivers a lot of money on fuel.
Another good idea of reducing the harmful effects of global warming is to encourage those third-world countries' governments to subsidise the price to purchase a new car so that those disgusting Earth-killing cars can be scrapped and traded for new ones for a very low price. If this is successful, I think global warming might even stop. Vehicle companies like GM should be awarded with a huge lump of money by governments when they successfully invent some new technology for cars that can help save fuel and reduce emissions. Doing so would encourage car manufacturers to research more and try their best to come up with something new to slow down global warming.
Written by Oscar Lee
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