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Originally Posted by IamIan
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Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr
Producing steel under current environmental standards won't neutralize the pollution from the older steel manufacturing process.
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Exactly ... That is a pollution penalty for the older vehicle's operating life time ... that the older vehicle will never escape. |
Wrong way of looking at it. That steel &c produced in the long-ago past already exists, and will continue to exist even if the old vehicle rusts away in a junkyard, or indeed, if it is crushed and recycled. But by driving it instead of buying a new car, you are avoiding the production of steel for the new car.
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MPG is not whole pollution picture.
As long as the discussion is about pollution ... you need to compare the tail pipe pollutants emitted ... not just MPG ... Some higher MPG vehicles actually produce more tail pipe pollution.
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But mpg (and its direct connection to CO2 emissions) is what really matters in the context of the world today. Those other emissions are only important when you have a large number of vehicles operating in a small area, such as a city, since they degrade fairly quickly, whereas CO2 is effectively permanent on the scale of a human lifetime.