[Vnbiz] Vietnam is getting richer

[Luis Gomez Juanes]

Hello

Here you can read an interesting article very linked to the
discussion. I believe it will be very constructive.

Luis
*************************************************************
Source: The Ecologist, Volume 35, No. 2, page 63. 2005

The typical American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his
car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks
it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to
meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for petrol, tolls,
insurance, taxes and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking
hours on the road or gathering resources for it. And this figure does
not take account of the time consumed by other activities dictated by
transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts and garages: time
spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education
meetings to improve quality of the next buy. The model American puts
in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles an hour. (6)

Motor vehicles are the single biggest source of atmospheric
pollution,contributing an estimated 14% of the world's carbon dioxide
emissions from fossil fuel burning, a proportion than is steadily
rising. Add the emissions from exploration, transportation, refining
and distribution of fuel, and this figure if 15 to 20 percent of world
emissions.
The average American car releases 300 pounds of carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere from a full, 15 gallon tank of gasoline. (1)
The average European car produces over 4 tonnes of carbon dioxide
every year. (1)
Methane (another global warming gas, 21 times more powerful than
carbon dioxide) is also emitted by cars. The level is quite low, only
about 1% of UK emissions, for example. But, they facilitate the annual
buildup of methane in the atmosphere—0.9% increase per year—by
emitting large quantities of carbon monoxide.
Carbon monoxide interacts and uses up hydroxyl radical in the
atmosphere. Hydroxyl radical is the principle chemical for destroying
methane. Emissions of carbon monoxide increase global warming by
removing a defense against the buildup of methane. (1)
In all, transport is estimated to account for 20-25% of all greenhouse
gas emissions. (13)


The Car and Pollution:

Exhaust fumes cause acid air, pollution, cancer, lead-poisoning and a
variety of bronchial and respiratory illnesses. The average car emits
a cocktail of more than 1,000 pollutants
Tetraethyl Lead: added to fuel to increase the output power of the
engine. Effects: it is extremely toxic and can effect almost any organ
of the body. Low level exposure over a long period most commonly
effects the nervous system and blood. Can impair the mental abilities
of children. 7 out of 10 children in Mexico city have had their
development stunted by lead poisoning from cars. (1)
Benzene: occurs naturally in crude oil. High benzene crudes sometimes
added to fuel to improve the properties of premium unleaded gasoline.
Highest concentration levels outdoors are in urban areas, and
especially near petrol stations, petrol tanks and benzene
producing/handling industries. Effects: a proven carcinogen. Studies
on benzene-exposed workers show statistically significant association
to acute leukemia. (1)
No safe level of airborne benzene can be recommended, as benzene is
carcinogenic to humans and there is no known safe threshold level (2)
Carbon Monoxide: cars are the major source of carbon monoxide,
accounting for over 65 percent of emissions in OECD countries.
Effects: one of the most directly toxic substances, it affects human
health by impairing the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood causing
impaired perception, slowing reflexes and drowsiness. It can increase
occurrence of headaches and effects the central nervous system, the
heart and the transference of blood around the body. In large doses,
it is fatal. (1)
Nitrogen Dioxide. Effects humans and plants, reducing growth and
causing lesions in sensitive crops, whilst in humans causing
irritation to the respiratory tract, reducing lung function and
possibly increasing susceptibility to viral infections. (1)
Nitric Oxide and Nitrogen Dioxide: together play major role in
formation of acid rain and in Europe are thought to contribute up to
half of the acidification of rain. In OECD countries, 47 percent of
nitrogen oxides come from road vehicles. (1) They also contribute to
the formation of ground level ozone, affect the acidification of soil
and cause changes in ground flora—the development of nitrogen loving
species at the expense of other species—and the over development of
micro-flora in seas and lakes, creating a lack of oxygen in the water
which kills wildlife. (7)
Low Level Ozone: The production of ozone is an indirect consequence of
car pollution. It results from photochemical reactions between
hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides. Ozone is the main ingredient in
photochemical smog, which effects eye irritation, headaches, coughing,
impaired lung function and eye, nose and throat irritation. Asthmatics
and children are most at risk. On a single bad day in Athens the smog
can kill 8 people and send up to 200 people to hospital. Background
levels of tropospheric ozone are thought to have doubled in the
northern hemisphere over the past century. (8, 1) Ozone is also the
single most important pollutant affecting vegetation. It damages food
crops, particularly potatoes, tomatoes, wheat and spinach, with leaf
diseases. This causes farmers to switch to less sensitive crops,
leading to loss of biodiversity. With present ozone levels in
Switzerland, agricultural losses cost at least US$200 per hectare.
Ozone damage also affects forests in America and Europe—pines and
larch are particularly sensitive. (7)
Sulfurous Emissions: cause soil and water acidification, damage to
plants (especially trees, mosses and certain lichens), and smog. (7)
Catalytic Converters are able to reduce emissions of carbon monoxide,
hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides but need regular inspection and
maintenance to work effectively.
Catalytic Converters have been shown to reduce emissions of carbon
monoxide by 80 percent under test conditions. But, despite their use
for 3 decades in the U.S., high levels of carbon monoxide remain a
problem in urban areas. This is probably due to a combination of very
high emissions when catalysts are cold and ineffective, complete
catalyst failure and deliberate misfuelling or tampering. (1)
Catalytic Converters have been shown to reduce emissions of nitrogen
oxide by 95 percent, but in actually use emissions depend on speed.
Minimum emissions occur between 40-60 miles per hour and increase with
higher speeds. (1)
Car certification can cause confusion. A Japanese car certified under
the Japanese procedure, which has a maximum speed of 110 kph, when
tested on UK roads was found to have excessive emissions of carbon
monoxide at higher speeds and in fact produced more carbon monoxide
than a non-catalyst car. (1)
A WHO report found that long term air pollution from cars in Austria,
Switzerland and France triggered an extra 21,000 premature deaths per
year from respiratory or heart diseases—more than the total number of
annual traffic deaths in the three countries. (3)
The Institute for European Environmental Policy has published a report
showing that car drivers breathe in up to three times more toxic
exhaust fumes than pedestrians or cyclists. Cars do not protect
drivers from pollution, as motorists are driving in a "tunnel of
pollution." Car drivers in the centre or outside lanes are subject to
a huge buildup of toxic gases. Cyclists and pedestrians who stay close
to the curb avoid the worst of the pollution as they are not in the
pollution tunnel. (3)
The Swedish National Chemicals Inspectorate has reported that wear and
tear on car tyres releases tiny airborne particles called PM10s, which
may cause cancer. Car tyres are the main source of PM10 pollutants,
which have also been linked to 10,000 premature deaths in Britain each
year from lung and heart disease. (3)


Oil:

Most cars run on gasoline or diesel. These are derived from petroleum,
more usually called oil. Globally, motor vehicles use one third of the
world's oil—finding oil involves habitat loss, oil spills, air and
water pollution, large emissions of carbon dioxide, regular
humanitarian abuses and wars.
By 1985 transport, in the shape of cars, buses and trucks, used 39
percent of Japan's oil, 44 percent of Western Europe's and 63 percent
of the USA's consumption of oil. (1)
Since 1976 the U.S. has used more oil than it produces—imports account
for 40 percent of use and are one-third of the nation's trade deficit.
(1)
Pressure for cheap oil lies behind ever increasing pressure to drill
environmentally sensitive areas including almost the entire outer
continental shelf from the Atlantic to the Arctic ocean, the Ecuador
Amazon River Basin, the coast of Australia and various tropical
forests. (1)
Oil Spills


In 1991 the Oil Spillage Intelligence Report recorded that, globally,
31.75 million gallons of oil (around 100,000 tonnes) were spilt in
1990. (1) The 1989 spillage rate was more than double that. Half the
quantity came from 3 major oil spills:
the Exxon (10.7 million gallons in Prince William Sound, March 1989.
the Kharrg 5 (20 million gallons off the coast of Morocco, Dec 1989)
the Aragon (7.35 million gallons off Madeira, December 1989) (1)
According to the Alaska Oil Spill Commission, oil discharges the size
of the Exxon Valdez disaster occur somewhere in the world once a year.
On average, a spill of a million gallons occurs every month. (1)

Non-Accidental Pollution:

Figures for sea pollution vary. The OECD notes that most estimates
cite a total input into the world's oceans of some 3 to 4 million
tonnes per year: about half comes from marine sources, with the rest
coming from land.
Marine Sources: The US National Academy of Science calculates that
shipping accidents only account for a quarter of ocean pollution from
marine sources, with non-accidental marine transport accounting for
twice as much. This is due to ships taking on sea water as ballast and
then discharge the oil-contaminated water back into the sea; from
deliberate washing out of oil tanks prior to taking on new oil, from
bilge pumping; and from tank washing before maintenance. (1)
Land Sources: urban and industrial sources and atmospheric pollution
account for 1.7 million tonnes of oil entering the seas from land.
More oil enters the seas from automobile exhausts and from oil changes
by city garages that are dumped down the drains, than from any other
source. (1)

Oil and Humanitarian Abuses:

There are numerous incidences of the search for oil, the greed of oil
companies, and the environmental destruction of oil leaks leading to
protest and revolt by effected local groups—usually the poorest and
most marginalised sectors of society. In Columbia, the U'wa tribe have
threatened mass suicide if Occidental Petroleum are allowed to drill
in land adjacent to their home—an area they consider sacred—as the
arrival of the oil company would spell death to their culture and way
of life any way. They have been forcibly evicted by the military and
several activists killed.

In Nigeria, oil drilling by Shell Nigeria sparked a revolt from the
Ogoni's that has been strongly repressed and lead to the deaths and
murders of many Ogoni activists. To read the full story, follow this
link to MOSOP Canada's web site.

These are just two examples of the abuses around oil. Sign up to the
Car Busters monthly bulletin to receive reports on others as they
happen.

Pollution During Manufacturing:


"The rate of production of new cars is difficult to assimilate: an
annual output of 48 million means that, somewhere in the world, one
new car appears every second. In eight hours, 40,000 new cars will
have been built; in a day, 100,000. With a growth in the human
population of some 90 million a year, the arrival of two new babies is
accompanied with the arrival of one new car. And this rate of growth
is, we are assured by the transport lobby, set to continue. Mackenzie
and Walsh, in their report Driving Forces, estimate that the world
total of trucks and cars—more than 500 million—could double to one
billion in the next twenty years." (4)

Manufacturing process involves not just the raw materials such as
steel, iron, rubber, plastics and aluminium, but large amounts of
substances that deplete the ozone layer, are greenhouse gasses, or use
huge quantities of energy.
Iron and Steel Making: needs large amounts of coal and limestone. A
major producer of sulfur dioxide, acids and slag waste.
Aluminium Production: involves substantial soil degradation in bauxite
mining. Smelters release sulfur dioxide and are substantial energy
users.
Zinc and Lead Industries. Considerable waste problems and a variety of
health threats.
Copper Smelting: sulfur dioxide emissions.
Platinum Production: six million tonnes of ore a year have to be
refined for catalytic converters
Emissions From Other Pollutants: sulfuric acid for batteries; heavy
metals and VOCs in paints; mercury in circuits; CFCs and other
greenhouse gases used in foam seats and body parts; asbestos in brake
pads. (1)

An average of 27 tons of waste is produced during the manufacture of
one car.(12)

Pollution During Disposal:

Disposal of old cars and car components—tyres, batteries and oil
further increase the environmental impact of the car.
Cars use 10 percent of OECD plastics production, for a whole range of
fittings, from fuel tanks to door handles. Disposal of the large
amounts of PVC, polyurethane, polyprone and high density polythene
used in cars is difficult. Over three-quarters of a million tonnes of
scrap plastic were produced in 1990 just from cars in Europe. (1)
In 1988, 209.5 million car tyres, 42.7 million truck tyres and 19
million road tyres were produced in the USA alone. Over 320 million
were sold in Japan, France, West Germany and the UK Of all these
tyres, only 30 percent are re-treaded, the bulk of the remainder are
dumped. There disposal is very problematic. Heated in the absence of
oxygen, tyres produce vast quantities of oil, more than a gallon rep
tyre, accompanied by thick black smoke. Dump fires are extremely
polluting. (1)
Car dumps themselves cause local pollution with high concentrations of
lead, cadium and zinc. (1)
On average, each dumped vehicle contains six litres of lubricating
oils, three litres of fuel , five litres of cooling liquid and three
litres of sulfuric acid. (1)
100 million batteries are discarded per year. Their sulfuric acid
contents represent a substantial environmental threat. (1)
In Western Europe, Japan and the USA nearly 40 million cars are
discarded every year. (1)

[Top]
The Environmental Cost of One Car

Extracting Raw Materials:
26.5 tonnes of waste
922 cubic metres of polluted air

Transporting Raw Materials:
12 litres of crude oil in the ocean
425 million cubic metres of polluted air

Producing the Car:
1.5 tonnes of waste
74 million cubic metres of polluted air

Driving the Car:
18.4 kilos of abrasive waste
1,016 million cubic metres of polluted air

Disposing of the Car:
102 million cubic metres of polluted air

A car causes more pollution before it's ever driven than in its entire
lifetime of driving. (5)

Road Building:

Road building involves the loss or irreparable degradation of delicate
ecosystem all over the world, with material for new roads coming from
large scale rock quarrying and gravel extraction, as well as road
construction itself through sensitive habitats and even protected
ecosystems and national parks.
New roads need materials for construction, take land previously
devoted to amenity use, or food production, fragment the countryside
and increase traffic and development areas over a wider region. (1)
Most roads consist of sand, gravel and rock with a tarmac surface.
Each mile of UK motorway uses 250,000 tonnes of sand and gravel.
Throughout much of Europe these "aggregates" are often extracted from
ecologically sensitive areas such as river valleys. (1)
Justification for new road building is usually reducing congestion. It
does not work. Increased car use leads to more road building: more
road building leads to increased car use.(3) (See the articles Traffic
Generation & Evaporation for more details; on
../magazine/feature_articles on this site).
Road construction often endangers biodiversity and habitats and can
cause species extinction: a survey of southwest England found that 372
important wildlife sites and 161 Sites of Special Scientific Interest
(SSSI, featuring high biodiversity) are under threat by development of
transport infrastructure. (7
Road construction alters water tables, disturbs the entire water cycle
and increases the run-off of heavy metals to surrounding areas.
Covering more land with concrete prevents water from seeping into the
ground and may cause flooding. (7)

Deaths and Accidents:

Estimates of road fatalities worldwide vary massively: anywhere from
500,000(9) to 880,000(10) or even 1.17 million(11) people die on the
roads every year — 10 million are estimated to be injured.
Forecasts indicate that by 2030 this will have risen to 2 million
deaths a year, and 50 million injuries. (7)
The cumulative death total in the period 1995-2030 is estimated to be
50 million.
Globally, accidents produce about 800,000 permanently handicapped
people per year. (7)
In the U.S., the American Lung Association estimate that between
10,000 and 24,000 people die each year as a result of traffic related
air pollution. (7)
The work of epidemiologists and public health specialists in the U.S.
and U.K. indicate that up to 60,000 Americans and 10,000 British are
killed each year as a result of particulate pollution. (7)

Also on this subject:

Der Tod hat einen Motor and Motorisierung ist tödlich - two articles
by German author Klaus Gietinger

Cars vs. Trains: Cost comparisonIn October 2004, the German magazine
Focus Money did a cost comparison of car travel versus train travel.
It found that:
for 12 of the 18 studied routes, a family of four traveled more
cheaply by train
seven of the studied routes are faster by train than by car
A roundtrip from Hamburg to Munich (1552 km) cost 323 euros by car, 48
euros less than by car. (And that includes transport costs to the
train station and from the train station to the final destination in
town.)

These figures are probably easily transferrable to other European
countries, less so to the United States, where fuel is still
artifically cheap. More info (in German):
http://www.oekonews.de/id/3798

External costs of car traffic in the EUA study published at the
beginning of October 2004 by the IWW and Infras research institutes
found that the the health and environmental costs of traffic in the EU
are 650 billion euros, 83% of which is caused by automobile and
trucks.
The figures:
External costs of traffic in the EU15 countries: 650 million euros
7 percent of GDP lost to health and environmental costs of transport
83% caused by street traffic
rail freight transport causes 17.9 euros in external costs per 1000
tonne-kilometre
truck transport causes 87.8 euros in external costs per 1000 tonne-kilometres
passenger rail: external costs of 22.9 euros per 1000 person-kilometre
private automobile: external costs of 76 euros per 1000 person-kilometre


Report available online in German and English
Pollution reduction on carfree dayAt the 2004 Carfree Day in Montreal,
Canada, measurements taken by the city showed a 90% reduction in the
level of nitrogen monoxide (NO) and a 100% reduction in carbon
monoxide (CO) within the area closed to cars that day as compared to
readings taken the same day at an intersection where motor vehicle
traffic was normal. Also, a 38% drop in the ambient noise level was
also recorded within the carfree zone. Source:
http://www.amt.qc.ca/comm/enville05/comm2_en.asp

China's Car-Culture Revolution: The Statistics
China has eight vehicles per thousand residents, Brazil has 122,
Western Europe 584, and the US 950
The amount of cars on Chinese roads has increased from 1 million to 12
million since 1990
This year analysts expect 2.4 million cars to be sold in China, and 5
million vehicles altogether
Beijing estimates that by 2020 there will be 140 million vehicles on
China's roads
Ford and GM expect that China will surpass the US (where 17 million
vehicles are sold per year) as the largest car market in the world by
2025
There are currently 15,000 highway projects planned in China


Sources
The Environmental Impact of the Car, Greenpeace International, 1991.
ISBN 871532 361.
World Health Organisation Guidelines for Europe for Benzene in Air.
Car Busters Magazine
MacKenzie, J.J. and Walsh, M.P. Driving Forces: Motor Vehicle Trends
and their Implications for Global Warming, Energy Strategies, and
Transport Planning, World Resources Institute, Washington D.C., 1990.
Cradle to the Grave, Umweltund Prognose-Institut Heidelberg, 1993.
Energy and Equity, Ivan Illich,
Lost in Concrete: An Activists Guide to European Transport Policies, A
SEED Europe, 1996, ISBN 90-75840-01-2. Available for purchase via Car
Busters Resource Centre.
End of the Road: From World Car Crisis to Sustainable Transportation,
Wolfgang Zuckermann, Chelsea Green Publishing Co., 1991. Available for
purchase via Car Busters Resource Centre.
BBC Report : 1998 figures
Global Road Safety Partnership, 1999 figures.
http://www.i-connect.ch/grsp/grspdev/problem.htm
US State Department quoting WHO figures
http://travel.state.gov/road_safety.html
One Earth http://www.oneearth.org
"Towards a better consideration of climate change and greenhouse gas
emission targets in transport and spatial/ land use policies, plans
and programmes", Thomas B Fischer, 2001 http://www.oneearth.org