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Automobile emissions testing program a cruel joke

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Contributed by: Francis Miller on 7/27/2006

When you connect the dots on the automobile emission testing program you begin to smell rotting, dead fish under the woodpile. I am convinced that we are being treated as unwitting dupes in this whole matter.

Last week the RM News reported that the EPA was using infrared cameras to identify pollution around oil and gas wells. Now, this technology is proven, and when combined with spectrometers can be very accurate. The EPA's very attempt to do this provoked the ire of the Oil and Gas Industry and their congressional champions, or lackeys, whatever you might think. Why? I think I know why.

Earlier this Spring, state senator Bob Hagedorn from Aurora was trying to convince us to accept a $10 tax on each vehicle to subsidize the hospitals for uninsured health care expenses by promising to eliminate the $25 dollar emission test fee. He let the cat out of the bag.

In an interview Senator Hagedorn said, "the oil and gas industry opposed (the elimination of the $25 emission fee) because it feared, without the emission tests (on automobiles) its wells could be targeted for emission reductions if air pollution worsened."

Now isn't that a fine how-do-you-do? You and I have been forced to sit in line, spend money on emissions tests and repairs so that the *&%$# oil and gas industry doesn't have to comply with any emission reductions?

If the truth be known, modern autos pollute the air less and less. Their electronic fuel injection systems are controlled by on-board computers and the owner need only replace a rare burned out spark plug and use a fuel additive to clean the engine. If the truth be known, the source of controllable, reduceable pollution is fleet vehicles such as city, county and school district diesel rigs, fleet trucks and pollution from refineries, oil and gas wells, electric generating plants and other industrial facilities. Even tilling the soil spews particles of carbon into the air and pollutes and diminishes the productivity of the soil.

I have been told that oil and gas wells are chronic polluters and that to plumb old wells to meet current codes would cost a tidy sum. A lot of those wells are old and leaking like the radiator on my 1990 Chevy pickup. But, they are also providing a nice revenue stream to people and government agencies.

So, all things considered you and I have to sit in lines, not only at the MVD, but at an emission testing center. If you own a diesel, you are harassed even more. It's not just the $25 fee, but the time and the potential to have to incur unnecessary repair expenses should you fail to pass the test.

What is driving all of this is politics at the highest level. The State of Colorado who benefits immeasurably from oil and gas extraction taxes quietly conspires to let the oil and gas industry and other large polluters off the hook. They are fearful of having their revenue stream jeopardized and they do not want to pay to bring their diesel fleets up to the highest standard. Burning biodiesel is just too much of an inconvenience.

Government has developed an unhealthy co-dependency on the interests it is supposed to discipline. Because it's estate is furthered by taxes on energy supplies it has not moved with due deliberate speed to reduce pollution or find alternative energy supplies. We the public pay for this dysfunction in a hundred ways.

I have to say that I was also very, very disappointed in the editorial staff at the Rocky for their mamby-pamby editorial on Sunday. The original Bob Hagedorn quote was in the Rocky, as was the article about the EPA. I also posted on YourHub on Thursday, so they had all the easter eggs in one basket. If their own reporters cannot put two-and-two together the way I did, at least they could cite my posting and give a little credit to citizen journalism, which is what YourHub is all about.

I purposely do not write high falutin, diplomatic postings and would be much more profane and direct and in certain people's face if Yourhub protocol allowed. At my age, having survived Vietnam and 30 years of corporate "do-dah" life, I do not see the benefits of engaging in polite civility with disingenuine people and then, in the background, conducting guerilla warfare to get the things done. Vested, self interests are so pathological in nature that they do not respond to reason, but must be confronted by the force of public opinion. Better to call a spade-a-spade, as far as I am concerned. I am not out to make friends, get elected, insinuate myself into the columns of the Denver Post, or sell advertising to both political parties during campaigns.

At my family reunion this weekend, I could not help but look at the young children in the extended family and be saddened at the world they are going to inherit because of the lack of courage of the people of our generation. You and I both know that the current paradigm is unsustainable and that this little EPA/auto emissions thing is just one piece of the puzzle. But, are we just going to stand in the bright lights like a stupified deer and let the semi hit us? I know these situations are so ubiquitous and all-pervasive that we cope by acting like we do not care any longer. I just have to have faith that at some deeper level within all of us we do care deeply, if not for ourselves, at least for our children and grandchildren to whom we are laying off these problems. Neither of the current political parties seems equipped to confront reality.

We are on a slippery slope back down the road to serfdom.

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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Francis Miller

Parker , CO

Francis Miller has posted 699 stories and 9 comments since joining on 11/17/2005. Francis Miller's average story rating is 4.2.

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