The stupidity of vehicle emissions inspection programs

A few weeks ago I spent a day and a half working to replace a critical steering component on my pickup truck. Partly because of my ideals and principles - which involve taking personal charge of the objects and tools that I own and use in my life - and partly to ensure that I apply the attention and precision to my vehicles that no trade mechanic will do to the same extent as me, 6 years ago I began to acquire hand tools and get to know my own vehicles mechanically and maintain them by myself.

I have two pickup trucks from the 90s, and several motorcycles from the early 2000s. It is no coincidence or by mere chance that I have chosen vehicles that were made over two decades ago. I'm not interested in having shiny new vehicles, and I do not give my vote of confidence to the majority of vehicles manufactured from the end of the first decade of the 2000s onwards, for a series of reasons that will be clear by the end of this essay.

 

This brief introduction is necessary to properly contextualize what follows: we are faced, since at least a decade ago, with a scenario slowly and progressively being imposed through a narrative that socio-environmental policy, supported by a long line of academic and non-governmental organizations, has and is wielding on the issue of mobility. Broadly speaking, it proclaims that the necessary and both socially and environmentally responsible action in this topic is to transition from fossil fuel burning vehicles to electric cars. This transition comes along, of course, with state regulations to limit the use of those vehicles with relatively "poor" emissions performance, which in real terms would predominantly be "old" vehicles.

 

This narrative is quickly and diligently accepted by the general public who, on the one hand, essentially lacks solid knowledge regarding environmental issues and energy resource management (as is the case sadly for so many other topics), and on the other hand, conveniently ignore what a true and realistic individual responsibility regarding this issue would entail in their lives, being as they are ruthlessly psychologically governed by a cultural conditioning that turns people into impulsive, materialistic consumers.

 

But for those who, faced with the continuous and endless waves of "climate" propaganda, strive to exercise objectivity backed by solid knowledge, this narrative falls apart when its clearest, most obvious omission is pointed out: the ecological footprint (which can be subdivided into different categories, among them the carbon footprint) of a car is not merely the result of driving it daily, but fundamentally, it is the result of its manufacturing. The fabrication of new vehicles is and will always have a much greater carbon footprint than what simply driving any vehicle has.

 

In other words, keeping existing vehicles functional, for a realistically reasonable range of time, carries an indisputably greater environmental benefit in mitigating climate change than any of the "solutions" that the official narrative misleadingly proposes.

 

And yet, this measure is completely absent from any of this narrative's talking points. In this way, the entire narrative is denoted as an ideological absurdity embedded in a profound irresponsibility that is disguised as socio-environmental altruism, to which there are underlying economic and geopolitical interests. This is no surprise for anyone who is not patently naive regarding the reality of  human nature and our political class.

 

The learning experience I've had with my trucks and other vehicles bitterly highlights the bizarre reality of utter waste that characterizes our society: the habit, for example, of purchasing new vehicles and getting rid of them after 4 or 5 years due to the irrational fear of confronting the responsibility of solving possible mechanical "problems", which in truth are, most of the time, nothing more than the simple need to renew parts of normal wear and tear, but instead are considered as "proof" that the vehicle "is already starting to give out" and therefore it must be replaced. This, on the other hand, is an outlook that's been implanted on people's minds slowly through the advancement of the art of marketing, the false belief that buying a new car is economically more convenient than repairing or keep running what one already owns and drives.

 

Of course, the car industry is directly responsible for this, as it benefits their ever growing car sales, but what is truly despicable is that it has managed to slowly and deliberately enact a progressive decline in vehicle quality, by which a twisted logic has been construed to be consistent with that part of the narrative which suggests that a new vehicle is to be replaced after 4 or 5 years, because owning it is no longer in its owner's benefit.

 

When the personal responsibility of maintaining, or supervising the maintenance, of the vehicles one owns is confronted, the absurdity of discarding, of getting rid of an "old" car on the pretext that "it is no longer functional" or that "it is old and no longer reliable" starts to make sense. A vehicle is a conglomerate of numerous parts by comparison to which its engine and transmission are almost negligible. And yet, for the vast majority of people, any failure in the engine or transmission justifies discarding the entire vehicle assembly: frame, body, dashboard, seats, upholstery, electric harness, sensors, bearings, ball joints, suspension, steering, axles, wheels, tires, exhaust, and a long etcetera.

 

Keeping a car in working order, especially those built a few decades ago, is not difficult, nor significantly expensive. Toyota, for example, has in stock in their warehouses almost all types of original parts for practically the entire range of vehicles manufactured from the 70s and 80s to the present time. It was no problem to acquire the parts I needed to mechanically renew my 1994 truck, and certainly the total expense of doing so was considerably less than the cost of purchasing a new truck. In the same way, there are parts manufacturers for all automotive brands, for the vast majority of models from present day and back to over 4 decades ago. Many spare parts are already manufactured and awaiting use in warehouses, and others continue to be manufactured according to demand.

 

Despite this, people prefer to spend wild sums of money to acquire a new vehicle, without caring about going into debt for years with payments at absurdly high interest rates, thus feeding the vicious commercial duo with which banks and automobile manufacturers do reciprocal business at the expense of the naivety of the masses and the compulsive purchasing need to which they are subjugated.

 

At this point, we return to the initial topic, that is, how state regulations, in many, too many, cases supported by environmental NGOs, result in strategies that would seem to tackle the problem but are inefficient, do not solve the underlying causes of the issue, and negatively impact individual rights as they infringe on individual autonomy. Such strategies must be strongly opposed, as they basically are nothing more than a collection tool for the State.

 

To clarify, I am not denying that private transportation contributes to air pollution, but including it as subject to regulation in the current context, in which little or nothing has been done to regulate the most polluting sources, would be a mistake and would imply agreeing with a government - clumsy as governments usually are - looking for a simple "solution".

 

As long as no work is done to implement efficient public transportation, vehicle emissions inspection programs merely become a penalizing and ideologically coercive act, on the one hand, and a collection tool, on the other, which would also be penalizing mainly owners of "old" cars, ignoring the fact that such individuals actually contribute less to pollution by driving such cars than those who have new but "less polluting" vehicles.

 

Here is a published research paper that explores precisely this point (available at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1361920919306285):