Puff is attached near the exhaust pipe of your vehicle. Its color changes dynamically, visualizing the amount of pollution your car is producing. Green indicates the lowest rate of pollution, red the highest.

Modern artists have often tackled environmental and ecological issues head on, such as through incorporating litter and refuse into sculptures, while other artists (such as photo, video and film artists) have sought to document industrial waste and/or have taken strong oppositional/advocacy stances in their works.

In recent years, many artists have sought to move beyond these “reactive”, commentary, and  documentary approaches and create objects and devices that serve practical purposes (if still a bit fanciful in appearance). One such artist/designer is Karolina Sobecka, whose car emissions monitoring device, ‘Puff’ , provides colorful feedback to the car owner on how “cleanly” (or efficiently) he/she is using/burning gasoline.

This author recently contacted Ms. Sobecka and asked her about this device (’Puff’) as well as her other designs, and her artistic/social/environmental goals.

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So it is with EU legislation. It’s not a question of if it’s going to be watered down, but by how much. For example, efforts to cut vehicle CO2 emissions have been drastically undermined thanks to sustained lobbying from the motor industry.

The original proposal was to cut all new vehicle emissions from around 160 g/km to 120 g/km by 2012, backed up with a fine of €90 for every g/km emitted over the limit by a manufacturer’s average vehicle.

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To avoid the growing car cemeteries, the government of Buenos Aires has decided to eradicate these prejudicial elements to the environment. How? They plan on compacting the cars and waste in a programmed way. Newspaper Perfil, informed readers that at the beginning 60.000 vehicles will be stripped of batteries, fluids and other components that threaten the environment.

The government plans to do a technical verification, a decontamination and compact whats leftover. The process will use software exclusively created by the University of La Plata to define the cars condition. If the car is in good condition, it will be fixed and later used by a government facility; however, if the car is inevitably broken, then it will be stripped, using a protocol elaborated by University of La Plata. This program explains what needs to be extracted and where it will be stored.

This kind of story brings joy to my heart, especially after my trip to Patagonia. It’s comforting to know some people in Argentina are working towards a better world.

Image: Flickr

In his ruling, Judge Sessions said the industry failed to prove that the state standards were unattainable, that they usurp the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) prerogative to set fuel economy standards, and were preempted by federal authority.

The ruling came on the heels of an effort by the federal government to block California, and other states, from requiring that new, more stringent emission standards go into effect in 2009 models. The EPA blocked the California law in a contentious move that followed signing of the new energy bill in December of 2007.

I wrote about the action and urged all states involved that had followed California’s lead to file suit against the EPA to force their hand. You can read it here

California was the first to file suit, as outlined here.

California is awaiting resolution of their lawsuit in US District Federal Court in California.

This one is worth watching.

To read the case, it’s in PDF and you can access it at the Vermont Federal Court site.

(Case 2:05-CV-302 Green Mountain Chrysler-Plymouth-Dodge et al v. Crombie et al)