Fuel, SUV's and Global Warming

Fuel, SUV's and Global Warming

During the last decade, the automotive industry and many environmental agencies, such as the EPA and Friends of the Earth, have been involved in a heated debate over the regulation of emissions standards from light-duty trucks (SUV’s). While the Friends of the Earth, an international environmental activist organization that uses grassroots techniques, has worked hard to get the federal government to raise fuel economies and emission standards for SUV’s, the automotive industry has been more than willing to produce mass quantities of gas guzzling machines. According to the EPA and other environmentally concerned groups, without tighter federal government regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from SUV’s and other light-duty vehicles, global warming will quickly ensue and lead to such major environmental issues as global climate change. As a result, automakers must weigh their decision between meeting the ever-increasing demand for light-duty trucks or realizing the imminent threat that their products have on the environment, and doing something about it.

It is important to define greenhouse gases and describe which gases are emitted from light-duty trucks and SUV’s. According to the EPA’s Global Warming Website on emissions¹, some greenhouse gases are naturally occurring, such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. Some unnaturally occurring greenhouse gases include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), which come from other industrial processes(1). All of these gases are capable of absorbing heat from the earth’s atmosphere, but some gases have a much greater propensity to trap heat in the atmosphere than others, result...

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5U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Atmospheric Programs. Excerpts from Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2000. EPA 430-R-02-003, [April 2002; cited 2004 March 30]. Available fromwww.epa.gov/globalwarming/publications/emissions.

6.6U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [Internet]. Uncertainties: What’s Known for Certain? [updated 2002; cited 2004 March 30]. Available fromhttp://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/climateuncertainties.html

7.7Difiglio Carmen, Fulton Lewis. How to reduce US automobile greenhouse gas emissions. Science Direct. Vol. 25, Issue 7. July 2000; 657-673.

8.8The Office of Automotive Affairs. CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) [Internet] [updated Feb.12 2004; cited April 1 2004]. Available fromhttp://www.ita.doc.gov/td/auto/cafe.html