[speaker001:] okay supposedly we're recording right now uh it's kind of interesting because nearly thirty minutes ago I was reading an advertisement for the new Infinity I forget what model number it was but one of the features they were touting was a freon free air conditioning system
[speaker002:] that's interesting I hadn't seen that I know there was a lot of talk about freon contributing to the the uh hole in the ozone layer and other various pollution but uh other than uh making the air conditioning systems tighter I didn't know that there was any work on uh alternate coolants
[speaker001:] yeah this is the first I'd seen of it too um actually I was kind of I'm surprised kind of surprised that that has become as much of an issue as it has because you know we know these things are designed to be closed systems either whether the problem's due to leaks or due to failures I would think that um
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] yeah if it was designed with reasonable prudence stuff wouldn't get loose and um I mean you don't want it to it's not cheap and the thing fails when it does so I'm kind of surprised it became as much of an issue as it has
[speaker002:] the uh the the times that I've seen any sort of of loss is uh at a time when maybe I'd have uh the the uh freon checked in the air conditioner or maybe topped off and it seemed to me that they'd practically waste almost as much as uh they'd put in the car but I've noticed in the past few years that uh the controls on that are
[speaker001:] um
[speaker002:] tighter uh people are a lot more concerned about that
[speaker001:] um-hum yeah so what what do you what do you see as the other biggies being in that realm you know what else could be something that is a bad thing
[speaker002:] well obviously cars uh and trucks contribute quite a bit and personally I'll uh I carpool uh most of the time with someone I work with but my schedule doesn't uh doesn't make for a consistent carpool
[speaker001:] yeah yeah I um traded cars recently and went from a car that got seventeen miles per gallon of worth of on on premium and didn't really wasn't happy with premium wasn't high enough to a car that gets about twenty four miles per gallon on uh the cheapest garbage you can put in it so I probably contributed my share there and um kind of interesting course um there is talk about legislation that would ban the manufacture of an engine that required leaded fuel at some point and um this I believe has I read has put the general aviation uh world going nuts because a general aviation engine can cost in the neighborhood of thirteen to fourteen thousand dollars to overhaul and if it flies a hundred hours a year
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] that's moderately high so the amount of dollars spent per unit of pollution saved um are very very tiny as compared to a car where it's a relatively inexpensive engine and it's running for a lot longer per year um so it's a question of um now apparently uh the EPA thought about this again and decided that these that that general aviation engines won't count and they'll allow them to continue to burn leaded fuels but there's some concern over if this is the only market is anybody gonna wanna bother making leaded fuels
[speaker002:] that's a that's a good question uh the leaded fuels have obviously been out of the automotive industry for quite some time and there's always talk about uh about regulating the emissions that a a car engine can produce and tightening down on that and of course the uh the large auto makers in this country spend untold millions to lobby to keep business just the same as usual
[speaker001:] it's an old joke about the uh finest Congressman money can buy sounds like another issue um you know I've always viewed it as um the pollution issue as a property rights issue if um somebody dumped their garbage in your front lawn um regularly you'd have legal recourse but if he dumps it into the air surrounding your house you really don't have any and um I think therein lies a big part of the problem is that it's it's viewed a little differently from physical pollution
[speaker002:] there's a big issue in Rhode Island right now uh there's a company that wants to build a coal fired uh energy plant very close to to downtown Providence and they are pulling all sorts of tricks to maneuver around various controls and inspections and regulations apparently the the regulations