According to the article, several car companies in Europe
are in violation to new car standards, as they have failed to adapt to these recent
standards mandated for all automobiles. In
2006 the EU initiated a government phase out of the refrigerant R134-a in favor
of using CO2 as a refrigerant since R134a is apparently far more potent in
terms of contributing to climate change.
However converting the cars to use CO2 as opposed to R134-a is expensive
and companies are reluctant to do so.
Many companies have started to use HFO-1234yf instead. However this refrigerant has been shown to
increase the risk of fire in the car and still release some harmful gases. Different car making companies
are in trouble with the EU for not complying to the new rules and even though
they have been allowed to an extent to use HFO-1234yf they run the risk of
being denied to sell their cars in many countries.
Furthermore there are still been several cases that show that R134-a are
still in use despite the attempted phase out. The companies have been
granted until 2015 to fix the problem, comply with the phase out and switch to using CO2 as a refrigerant.
I choose this article because I wanted to show how attempts
to stop environmental destruction (in this case climate change) are often meet with problems especially when
faced with big business companies. In
order to evoke any environmental change many companies have to alter what they
do and often that alteration Is costly and may reduce profit, something that no
big business wants despite the benefits it might have for the environment. Therefore many will protest against change as
much as they can or find ways around it.
One thing that I liked about this article was that it
included at the end arguments of people against the use of CO2 refrigerants, showing both sides. By
using arguments from two sides the article sort of gave
the impression that there was not a clear solution and that both were
going to
inflict harm in some way, leaving it up to the reader to decide the best
course of action. I would have liked the article to be a little
clearer on more of the companies that were involved in still using some
of the old refrigerants as the article was a little unclear in that
regard.
No comments:
Post a Comment