[JSH]

On the original topic - a car is a durable good. As long as it has value it will get passed down from owner to owner and be used. Then when it has no value in one country it gets passed down to another. (Southeast Europe is full of old cars from Western Europe. Asia is full of cars from Japan, Latin America is full of cars from the USA) I don't see a big environmental difference of where someone chooses to buy into that car life cycle.

I personally like to buy used cars for financial reasons and will generally buy a 3 year old car for 60% of the new price and keep it until it is 10 years old. To me that is the sweet spot of ownership cost, features, and maintenance headaches. However, someone had to buy that car new for me to buy it used and the environmental cost of manufacturing is shared by every owner.

I do support the relatively recent moves to ban old cars for major cities. Old cars are massively more polluting than new cars and cities all over the world have major smog problems.

I have this dilemma with my old motorcycles. I have a 1976 and 1979 Kawasaki KZ400. They basically have no emission control systems and even when they are in good tune you can smell the unburned fuel behind them. I can't in good conscience commute to work on a vehicle that is putting out the pollution of 100 cars.

CARB doesn't have records back to 1976 but even the newer 1982 KZ440 puts out 1.44 grams of HC per mile and 11 grams of CO. That compares to 0.014 grams HC and 0.5 grams CO for my 2014 TDI. That is 103 times the HC and 22 times the CO.