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Venting Emissions Out the Rear

Venting Emissions Out the Rear

By: Powell Gammill


Well this month's theme is in part about environmentalism.  I coincidentally got a reminder of environmentalism this month as my 2005 Jeep Wrangler was up for its emissions testing. 

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created by then President Richard Nixon in 1970, so you know it is a good thing. <not>

The major metropolitan area of Arizona is "Phoenix", which like Los Angeles is made up of millions of people in multiple cities that have grown together in a geographic depression that marketers call a "valley" with surrounding hillsides.  Many cities worldwide have similar "valley" depressions in which their populace mainly resides. 

One thing about such arrangements is it traps air pollution on warm/hot days in which a layer of cooler air gets trapped (an inversion layer) in the depression and is held down by a layer of warmer air on top.  There is no wind and no convection currents.  Pollution can simply build up to literally suffocating levels.  The first to go (the canaries in a mine) are those with diminished lung capacity (young, old, asthmatics, smokers, people with pneumonia).  A brown haze called smog envelops the city.  This was a price industrialization extracted upon the tragedy of the commons as air is owned by nobody and everyone.  So, air polluting commerce simply dumps the exhaust of combustion activities and forms of evaporation (volatiles) into the air we breathe.  The result was literally chocking us to death.  [It could be argued this is a trespass upon all whom breathe.] 

In many cities today in newer (emerging) industrialized cities this smog problem threatens mass casualties for the accumulated human beings (Mexico, China and India come to mind) living in one of these valleys.  Mexico City has come close to losing tens, if not hundreds of thousands of its occupants.

So, Phoenix and even Los Angeles today along with other cities no longer have this problem. The EPA must be doing a great job, right?  Well, no.  The vast majority of reduced emissions comes from two things: Greatly improved gasoline mileage that has reduced gallon of fuel combusted per mile each automobile has traveled, and the amazing achievement of the catalytic converter which more efficiently combusts engine exhaust air into water and carbon dioxide. 

The greater fuel efficiency has nothing to do with the EPA; though they would love to take credit by pointing to their required average fuel efficiency standards.  That however was taking after the fact credit for a market demand by a public rejecting poor fuel mileage vehicles as gasoline prices rose.  And the rising fuel efficiencies have been really impressive.

Mandating a catalytic converter on all vehicles and smokestacks is less likely to have been demanded by the public until people started dying and cities started dissolving from the bad air.  Indeed, the early catalytic process mandated by government produces high amounts of nitric acid in the air which led many cities around the USA to experience dissolving from the increasing acidity of the air.  Changes mandated to automobiles with improved catalytic converters made this exhaust component fairly low.  Reagan was correct that in modern cars in Los Angeles, the intake air going into the carburetor was dirtier (more polluted) than the air coming out of the exhaust.

So here, it may be argued that [some] government pollution monitoring and cleanup programs have been successful and that a public would not have proactively demanded polluters clean up their act (which costs are passed on to the consumer) without government stepping in and demanding pollution equipment for them.  

Many of us can remember in the early to mid 1970's, however, the wretchedly horrible Rube Goldberg type emissions designs foisted upon the American automobile industry by the EPA that only went away because a consuming public rejected such vehicles terrible costs and diminished efficiencies and lifespans.

And of course, to prevent so called free consumers from modifying (repairing) their vehicles by removing or altering their emissions equipment the EPA demanded all states start to mandate inspection of its citizens motorized property annually for signs of tampering with or failing design of their mandated emissions equipment. Noncomplying vehicles were effectively or literally seized, and not allowed to operate on government roads without being repaired to pass testing.

Arizona has a unique program.  Well no longer unique actually, six other states experience its joys.  But Arizona was the first to enjoy a benevolent mandate from the Environmental Protection Agency compelling all vehicles within a county with more than a certain number of people people MUST pass an enhanced emissions test in order for that vehicle to operate on the road.  In Arizona there are two such counties that must undergo this enhanced testing referred to as IM240 in which the car is paced upon a on a driving dynamo rather than an idle testing.  And what a hoot the early days were too.  These two counties have about 90% of the state's population and we all pretty much own a car---often multiple cars.

Like ALL government programs, a large percentage of vehicles failed in the early days of the newly implemented IM240, and the peasants were revolting at the costs, the TSA style treatment at the testing centers, the long nonproductive waits in line to be tested,  and effective vehicle confiscations being shifted onto them.    Long, and I mean LOOOOOOOOOONG lines of idling cars would be at these testing centers with their mandated fees where overheating vehicles particularly in the sweltering above one hundred degree days of Arizona summers ("recommend not running your air conditioners if you want your vehicles to pass") would not only fail cars far and wide it would overheat and stall them, or burst radiators ("sorry that's a fail") further holding up the lines of cars awaiting testing.

So the testing cycle was shortened and a vehicle that failed at first testing was given an immediate idling test where the engine was revved and held for a minute of so to equalize the engine temperatures and them the tests were performed again.  Now most of the failures were passing.  What a pain!

Dynamo testing, where the car is "driven" on a simulated speed up course through its operating gears and speeds while emissions is tested mandated a car's driver be forced from their vehicle and detained in a small glass cage that everyone can see while a government hired "technician" occupied the property of the vehicle and "test drove" it.

A few lawsuits latter and a law change and probably not a few claims that valuables went missing from the vehicle after the testing was concluded and the law was changed to permit the driver to be forced from their vehicle for testing purposes to an alternative where they could occupy the passenger seat during testing.  Of course no notice of this new accommodation was posted or printed anywhere.  And when you tried to assert this new found right to not be detained in a cage for the world to see as well as to monitor the technician in your car, you were told they didn't know what you were talking about and if you didn't want the testing you could just move along (after waiting an hour in line to get tested).

It took MANY years before the annual testing pamphlet was modified to state in plain language that you had the right to observe from the passenger's seat.  Most good little monkeys still obey the barked command to go wait in a glass cage for your own protection, of course.

All states have emissions testing.  Most an idle test.  It should be pointed out that Arizona was blackmailed under threat of loss of highway funds if it did not adopt in law the enhanced testing.  This was done by people being bribed, er, lobbied at the EPA by a private entity that would build the testing machines and would later hire said EPA people onto their staff to help "lobby" the adoption of these testing machines everywhere. 

Over the years market forces of a dissatisfied peasantry have resulted in other changes to the program.  In order to speed up testing the state has looked at places to drop testing.  Motorcycles get different quicker tests. Alternate fuel vehicles are either exempt or have an alternate quicker testing procedure.  Vehicles are now tested in alternate years cutting lines in half.  And new vehicles which rarely failed their first five years of testing are now no longer tested their first five years.  That $5 forever test is now $27.  Testing fewer vehicles means higher prices to pay for the testing program.  The last major change is to skip much of the IM240 testing on cars made after 1995 that have a plug in port to their computer chip, the On-Board Diagnostic (OBD) computer which records the status of the emission systems within the vehicle.  There the details of what the chip have recorded are compared to see if everything has been running well.  The passed test takes less time than the cash exchanging hands.  I do not know what a failed "OBD" test means:  Further retest protocol or expensive service at repair shop, but I suspect the latter. 

Of course, this sort of mandated activity leads to corruption at the source by bribing the inspectors---which would explain many of the cars on the road that have current tags and smoke like a chimney.

Most of these rule changes did not please their federal masters but local political pressure forced compromise lest the peasants revolt by tossing the bastards out of office.  So some sanity drifted into the EPA's IM240 enhanced testing program.  I suspect the IM240's days are numbered as the average age of vehicles removes the pre-1996 ones.  If only the EPA's and its corresponding government's days were numbered.

Lastly, let us remember this air pollution program was never about removing polluting vehicles from the road.   It was about getting a favored testing machine built by a corporation to have government enslave a pool of customers to use their product at the cost of a few bribes to government officials and the cost of freedom and earnings of the masses.  At least in the most populace areas of Arizona.  We know this is true because at the time legislatures were also being lobbied by another company to use their "smogdog"---vans that would be parked along the side of single lane freeway entrances or exits that would both record a vehicle's emissions and license plate as it passed by without interfering with the vehicle's transit.  Failed vehicles (polluting) would receive a summons in the mail to report for further testing.  This was rejected by the EPA who wanted IM240 on all cars or no highway funds. 

Our legiscritters complied by implementing both of course as a “compromise.”  But the smogdog went by the wayside in a year or two, despite the fact that it actually did single out polluting cars from nonpolluting and demanded testing of only the polluting cars.  I'm not saying such surveillance is consistent with libertarian principles, but it restricted our freedoms less, lowered the confiscation of earner's wealth less and targeted those vehicles who were trespassing upon the air we breathe as opposed to government solution of everyone ponying up to wait in line.

This does bring up a question for libertarians that smarter people than I have addressed:  Can air pollution be dealt with by the private sector without government standing by with guns?  Certainly private sector solutions are fairer in that polluters are usually allowed and even encouraged to pollute by the EPA and other government entities if enough money changes hands.  This puts the big polluters at a competitive advantage over their upstart would be rivals who would pollute less in volume.  But where is the incentive to not pollute without the guns?  Where is the voluntary consumer demand and willingness to pay more for a product that pollutes less?  Of course air pollution addressed in this country and not in other countries puts any air polluting business at a disadvantage in this nation compared to nations with no restrictions.  Oh, to be Solomon.


 

 
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