Before we moved upstate, I hadn't owned a car since 1966
when my first husband and I purchased a Corvair, which, I still believe, is one
of the Great Automobiles of All Time. (I will never forgive Ralph Nader for a.
running for President in 2000 and b. downing the Corvair because its 1965
version bounced off bridges.) I lost the
Corvair in my divorce and moved to Manhattan, where – not through any sacrifice
on my part – I had no car and spent over 40 years not contributing much to the nation's
automobile pollution.
So, when Michael and I started looking for cars, we wanted
something green. I argued for a Prius, but after heavy-duty research Michael
discovered that Volkwagen had come up with diesel technology that not only
solved the emissions problem but bestowed on these lucky cars great mileage and
a fast-action engine. So in 2013 shortly
before we moved full time to Hudson we bought a white Jetta TDI, which in 2009
had been awarded Green Car of the Year.
I really like driving it.
It gets 50 miles to the gallon on the highway and it's zippy. No Corvair, but very nice. Then a
week or so ago the scheisse hit the fan. We discovered that our adorable fun-loving
non-polluting Jetta was actually Rosemary's NOxious Baby.
Nitrogen oxides (NOx) are on the menu of diesel emissions
and include two gases, nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide, which are particularly
nasty environmental bullies. When
released into the air, they produce smog on hot days, exacerbate breathing
difficulties in people who already have them, and, over a 100-year period, have
265 to 310 times the global-warming potential as carbon dioxide. Besides diesel particulates, NOx is
considered one of the most critical pollutants found in the exhaust.
When developing their "green" turbocharged diesel
engines, German engineers were able to filter out the particulates but were
stumped by the tricky NOx. So effective in producing rockets in the distant
past, they were unable to keep it from escaping without reducing gas mileage
and performance. So they just decided to
lie. ("We will not invade
Poland.") They simply built
software that switches on to produce splendidly low NOx levels during testing,
but once the car hits the actual road the software switches off, and as our
Jetta revs up to its lively speed with its terrific gas mileage the NOx-ious
particles also rev up -- to 10 to 40 times the EPA allowance.
A digression: In the late seventies I regularly passed this scruffy
guy on a street corner near my office in Midtown standing in front of a lopsided
cardboard box pasted with wrinkled black and white Xeroxes of happy dolphins. A
scummy glass jar sat on top of the box with "Save the porpoises!"
taped across it and a lid gauged with a hopeful slot. He would yell and scream at passersby, and
if you were moronic enough to stop (I was), he would shift the attention of his
tiny fierce eyes to you (me) and continue his harangue directly, "They
ain't fish. Did you know that? They're mammals. And they're smart. They can talk. Like you and me. And the government is torturing them. Torturing them. Shooting them. Killing them. Stop the killing." He shoved a clipboard
in front of me with a ratty petition clamped onto it. A few other hapless suckers had signed
it. I reluctantly added my name, included
a false address, and pushed a dollar into the slot. I knew he was conning me
but what if he wasn’t? A couple years
later I saw him downtown, with the same cardboard box, but this time sporting
grainy photos of kittens, whom he was urging passers-by to save by signing his
still-grubby petition and putting money into the same paw-streaked glass jar. I sneaked by.
This story is simply intended as an example of my inability
to say no to people even when I know they're hustling me. I'm so bad at it, in fact, that I made a decision
many years ago – about the same time I was saving sea mammals -- to give to
anyone on the street who asked. It's
easier than pausing to puzzle over a badly written sign pleading for train
money, propped up in the lap of a dirty young woman who looks like she just
graduated from Yale. I carry around dollar bills and loose change in my pockets
so I can just hand cash over to any random asker without fumbling through my
purse and making myself a mugger target.
I'm a little embarrassed but it saves on guilt-time.
So,
until this week, I have been resigned to being a sucker. I'm ok being a chump for gray schlumpy people
poking at my liberal bias in return for quarters so they can live a minimal
life. The porpoises may not be
benefiting but their lives have not changed.
But now I'm pissed. I'm pissed at playing the fool for Germans, which
feels old fashioned and somehow satisfying. To be fair, they aren't the only
automakers who have scammed the public. Ford and Chrysler were caught cheatingon emissions in the 1970s, and Volkswagen's current crime isn't directly
deadly.
It doesn't result in engines catching fire or ruptured
airbags, but it does hurt kids with asthma, and if they hurl enough of this
stuff into the atmosphere, it could kill dolphins.
So I'm ashamed for being a patsy this time. It has consequences. Volkswagen played heavily on the liberal hope -- a bit shabby but a well-intentioned hope -- that we can drive a speedy car without imposing extreme environmental harm. And, after lifting thousands of dollars from us, they happily wave us off as we drive our perky diesels into the sunset, smugly tracking our savings on fuel while we spew poisons into the air. Nitrogen oxide uber alles.
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