Goliaths of pollution defeating the Davids

To transport and change iron ore and aluminium ore into final workable ingots and recycle metals and plastics, etc. needs a tremendous amount of polluted air/energy combinations.

A knowledgeable, technical person who maintains his old car must now scrap it due to the new tax levels on aged cars. Age is not enough reason to suggest that a car engine is inefficient.

In 1960 my old Morris 1000 car, in Kent, England, impeccably adjusted and carefully driven by myself, covered 51 miles (not kilometres) to the gallon and a 30-year-old petrol Morris Marina 1300 with a well tuned SU carburettor, in hilly Malta, covers 35 miles to the gallon. The calorific value of fuel in Malta in not the highest, and more electronics in my car would not produce more energy - the best electronic engine management unit and spraying injectors introduced in the car would perhaps increase the mileage from 35 to 38 per gallon, if at all.

I find it most unfair that a technically qualified family man who religiously sees to the engine efficiency of his car is now being blamed as a giant polluter of air, much more than the financial giants who run five-litre cars, massive container trucks, jumbo jets and other air buses, air forces, cruise ships, private power stations, smelters, chains of hotels, etc.

One modern jet engine can swallow, breathe, burn and pollute about two tons of fresh air per second and one large Bessemer smelter in America, India or China consumes about 10 tons of fresh air per second. And the thousands of tons of imported detergents in Malta find their way into the sea along the coast from Ċirkewwa to Marsaxlokk, which killed all the octopus breeding grounds I hunted to eat, in my youth.

The detergent and drainage pollution on our coast is tremendous, while the pollution volumes of the thermodynamic gigantic fresh air guzzlers, even if they operated at the maximum possible thermodynamic efficiencies, will pollute more voluminous fresh air in one nanosecond than my old Morris 1000 ever used in its lifetime.

If the vehicle were scrapped and smelted or left to rot at Magħtab it would produce more poison in the air or in the water table, with much more expense to cure the resulting pollution, than if left on the road in my experienced hands, running it free of tax.