Unified effort for cleaner air needed – Loren

SENATOR LOREN LEGARDA SAID YESTERDAY THAT ANY AND ALL EFFORTS, MOVES AND TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS THAT COULD REDUCE THE EMISSION OF CARBON INTO THE AIR SHOULD BE FULLY SUPPORTED BECAUSE “GLOBAL WARMING AND THE RESULTING CLIMATE CHANGE IS EVERYONE’S CONCERN.”
Loren issued the statement in reaction to the Radio Frequency ID (RFID) program of the Land Transportation Office (LTO) which the agency started implementing last January 4.
Among other things, the LTO’s RFID project is intended to ensure full compliance by motorists with the provisions of the Clean Air Act pertaining to the smoke emission testing of vehicles being registered in the country.
“It is a well known problem that a number of motor vehicles had not really been tested for compliance with our smoke emission standards. The proliferation of fake certificate of compliance attests to this,” said Loren.
“Thus, if this RFID project of the LTO would ensure that all vehicles using our roads had been smoke-emission tested, then, I am for it,” added Loren, chair of the Senate Committee on Climate Change.
“We must get smoke-belching vehicles off our roads now,” she stressed.
The United Nations Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster-Risk Reduction Champion for the Asia-Pacific Region, Loren is a co-author of the Clean Air Act, as well as the principal author of many other landmark environmental laws like the Solid Waste Management Act and the Climate Change Act.
The LTO’s RFID project entails the tagging of all registered vehicles with scanner-readable stickers that contain relevant information whether a vehicle had been properly registered, smoke-emission tested and whether or not alerts had been issued against it by the authorities for traffic violations or involvement in the commission of crimes.
The emission of carbon and other greenhouse gasses into the air is being blamed by scientists for the elevation of global temperature, which in turn results to climate change.
Among other weather disturbances, climate change results to more severe droughts and more powerful typhoons, similar to the devastating typhoons Ondoy, Pepeng and Santi which inundated the Philippines late last year.
Only properly maintained vehicles are able to pass the smoke-emission tests required by the LTO for their registration. Fixers had been known to provide with fake compliance certificates the owners of vehicles who had failed to pass smoke testing.
With the RFID tagging, the LTO would immediately know whether a vehicle had been carbon tested or not.