| Second: Pollution Most people's reaction to pollution is simple: if we can't see it or smell it, it isn't a problem. Chainsaw motors that produce plenty of smoke in the exhaust are thought of as dirty. Old diesel-fuelled trucks are thought of as dirty. Cars, in general, are thought of as clean, unless the motor is obviously worn out. Aside from the carbon dioxide produced whenever any fuel is burnt, the released additives and others discussed previously and the oxides of nitrogen formed in a high-compression engine, there are some other pollutants which are not well known. Not all oil fields are equal. Some have very pure crude oil, while others have oil that is badly contaminated with sulphur. The sulphur can be refined out, but this costs money. Since most of the readily-available cleaner oils have been used, the more sulphurous oil is used. The compounds of sulphur formed during combustion are pollutants. Enormous amounts of waste heat are generated by internal combustion engines. At the design point of the engine - its most efficient throttle setting and speed - the engine efficiency might be 26%. Roughly 25% of the energy in the fuel tank is simply radiated or conducted to the cylinder walls and head of the engine, where it must be conducted away, and the remaining (approximately) 49% of the available heat is lost through the exhaust pipe. Unburnt fuel is squashed into any crevices in the combustion chamber during compression. This fuel is not burnt due to being chilled by contact with the engine. When the pressure decreases again during the exhaust stroke, the fuel is pushed out of the crevices and is released to atmosphere via the exhaust. This effect is minor in a new engine, but increases with engine age. Pollution isn't just exhaust pipe emissions. It can also be caused during the making of a car and the re-smelting of the metal used, when the car is scrapped. A reason that many environmental activists keep old cars going is that the typical car requires at least as much energy to make as it will consume during its useful life. Another form of pollution is in rusty wreckage dumped across countrysides and in public places. In any country where a population has to pay highly to have their rubbish removed, irresponsible dumping soon follows. A little-known but significant form of pollution comes from the oil associated with cars. News images of the consequences of a supertanker crash are familiar: oil-drenched sea birds and fouled beaches. What isn't known is that this is the minor amount of oil polluting the world's oceans - the majority comes from automotive sump oil which is washed down drains after an oil change. Roughly three-quarters or more of the oil in the seas comes from this source, usually individual car owners. Third: Ethics. Corporations are only accountable to their shareholders, in terms of direct interference in a corporation's strategies and plans. Since a corporation is not an individual human being, but rather a legal fiction with most of the rights of a human being, ethics are not something that comes naturally and are imposed on the corporation from outside. Sometimes these ethics are from market considerations and practicality, sometimes from governments and law, and sometimes from customers of the corporation. Without these constraints being imposed, the corporation can act amorally in order to maximise return on shareholder capital. Take this situation: incredibly expensive oil exploration has found useful deposits of oil under land. The land is already occupied. As far as the oil company is concerned, these people are simply in the way. It will buy them off if it has to, or use local law to force entry to the oil, but if they are poor (like most of the people in the world) and if no constraints are imposed, it will simply find the cheapest and simplest possible way to 'retrieve' the oil. The current situation of the Ogoni people in Nigeria is caused by this: pipelines (which leak oil) run over their arable lands, poisoning the ground; roads and installations are bulldozed into the countryside with no warning or debate; dissent or disruption of any kind is dealt with by mercenaries and crushed; and the oil is taken with no money paid for the resource. This situation is extreme - most of the oil in the world is acquired ethically - but it illustrates a basic problem of the standard car engine. It is a device that is extremely fussy about its fuel and requires lots of this one type of fuel, cheaply, to be economic. |