4 ms·

Proximity matters. Kids living close to highways are more likely to get asthma. That being said, only half of the risk is linked to nearby highways, and region

by akamaka 11y ago

Proximity matters. Kids living close to highways are more likely to get asthma. That being said, only half of the risk is linked to nearby highways, and regional pollution matters too. But you're just making yourself sound like a doofus by saying "cars are not the problem".

mschuster91 11y ago
> But you're just making yourself sound like a doofus by saying "cars are not the problem". Everyone and his mother focuses on cars. Even a 50% reduction on new cars will take DECADES until a meaningful impact on the total car emissions! Old cars get resold to Africa or other poorer continents, so the impact of new cars is next to zero! Meanwhile, the container, cruise and other heavy ship industry belches emissions on multiple orders of magnitude than these savings. Fix fifteen fucking ships and you save in a single year more pollutants than you could save in a decade by stripping 10% of worldwide car emissions.
- akamaka 11y ago
  If you're comparing fixing only new cars as they are sold to fixing ships immeadiately, it's obvious which will have a quicker effect. However, car emission testing programs already exist which force the driver to do repairs to their existing car. Pollution deaths are still mostly a local/regional problem, so fixing ship emissions is a problem for port cities, while fixing car emissions is a problem for everyone who lives near a major road.
  - mschuster91 11y ago
    Well, it's easier to fix ships than cars, simply because of numbers (15 ships vs 760 m cars). > However, car emission testing programs already exist which force the driver to do repairs to their existing car. Repairs, yes. But repairs only set the car back to whatever standard applied when it got introduced. Retrofitting is theoretically possible, but at a huge expense to the car owner. And tbh I rather see huge shipping co.s having to pay for upgrading their ships than the often poor people stuck owning a beat-up car. > while fixing car emissions is a problem for everyone who lives near a major road. Problem is that the only real fix is diverting the traffic or eliminating it altogether. Due to the high percentage of old cars on the road new emissions standards are useless for immediate fixes.

by akamaka 11y ago

mschuster91 11y ago

> But you're just making yourself sound like a doofus by saying "cars are not the problem". Everyone and his mother focuses on cars. Even a 50% reduction on new cars will take DECADES until a meaningful impact on the total car emissions! Old cars get resold to Africa or other poorer continents, so the impact of new cars is next to zero! Meanwhile, the container, cruise and other heavy ship industry belches emissions on multiple orders of magnitude than these savings. Fix fifteen fucking ships and you save in a single year more pollutants than you could save in a decade by stripping 10% of worldwide car emissions.

akamaka 11y ago
If you're comparing fixing only new cars as they are sold to fixing ships immeadiately, it's obvious which will have a quicker effect. However, car emission testing programs already exist which force the driver to do repairs to their existing car. Pollution deaths are still mostly a local/regional problem, so fixing ship emissions is a problem for port cities, while fixing car emissions is a problem for everyone who lives near a major road.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  Well, it's easier to fix ships than cars, simply because of numbers (15 ships vs 760 m cars). > However, car emission testing programs already exist which force the driver to do repairs to their existing car. Repairs, yes. But repairs only set the car back to whatever standard applied when it got introduced. Retrofitting is theoretically possible, but at a huge expense to the car owner. And tbh I rather see huge shipping co.s having to pay for upgrading their ships than the often poor people stuck owning a beat-up car. > while fixing car emissions is a problem for everyone who lives near a major road. Problem is that the only real fix is diverting the traffic or eliminating it altogether. Due to the high percentage of old cars on the road new emissions standards are useless for immediate fixes.