Topic:

Healing the Adverse Affects of Air Pollution Caused by Our Excessive Use of Gasoline
Thors Cesar Chavez Hortencia Gardea Josie Monclova Dorene Ramirez Laura Romero Lucila Torres

Name: Members of Project:

We would like to begin our presentation with a Scripture selection taken from the Old Testament which demonstrates what a perfect environment God has created and how we have altered it with our inventions: Psalms19:1-4, How clearly the sky reveals Gods glory! How plainly it shows what he has done! Each day announces it to the following day: Each night repeats it to the next. No speech or words are used, no sound is heard; yet their message goes out to all the world and is heard to the ends of the earth. God made a home in the sky for the sun; It comes out in the morning like a happy bridegroom, like an athlete eager to run a race. Starts at one end of the sky and goes across to the other. Nothing can hide from its heat. God gave us his wisdom on how to care for creation. Our relationship with the earth is like a marriage where love, respect, unity, and harmony must exist to survive and flourish. We have contaminated the oxygen and polluted our atmosphere. We have been unsuccessful in nurturing and caring for Gods creation. These verses taken from the Old Testament teaches us what a perfect world God has created for us:

Sirach 42:21-25. The orderly world shows the greatness of his wisdom; he is the same forever and ever. Nothing can be added to him, and nothing taken away; he needs no one to give him advice. All his works are beautiful, down to the smallest and the faintest spark of light. All these things go on forever, and all of them have their purpose. All things are in pairs, each the opposite of the other, but nothing the Lord made is incomplete. Everything completes the goodness of something else. Could anyone ever see enough of this splendor? (stop) The use of a motor vehicle in itself is not wrong; for God gave us the mental capacity to invent things but not to an extent where we cause harm to our environment or others. This is when we need to look, listen, discern, and learn on how to keep in balance with Gods creation. Dr. M. King Hubbert, a geophysicist, is well known as a world authority on the estimation of energy resources and on the prediction of their patterns of discovery and depletion. In 1949, Dr. Hubbert predicted that the fossil fuel era would be short-lived peaking in the 1970s and decline thereafter. His prediction since has been proven to be remarkably accurate. Attached is his graph. As quoted by Dr. Hubbert: Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know. We would like to see a decrease on the dependency on fossil fuel, specifically gasoline consumption which leads to an increase in green house gasoline emissions. This is the number one source of air pollution. In the 1950s, the average American family owned one vehicle per household. As of today, each member of a family, who is of driving age, owns a motor vehicle. This is just one example. This is the primary reason the air pollution has worsened. Research has proven that the health effects of air pollution have been caused by gas emissions. These types of health effects have caused respiratory illnesses, a decrease in lung function, and premature deaths, to name a few. The following Scripture selection taken from the Old Testament demonstrates what Jesus wants from us: Micah 6:6-8. What shall I bring to the Lord, the God of heaven, when I come to worship him? Shall I bring the best calves to burn as offerings to him? Will the Lord be pleased if I bring him thousands of sheep or endless streams of olive oil?
2

Shall I offer him my first-born child to pay for my sins? No, the Lord has told us what is good. What he requires of us is this: to do what is just, to show constant love, and to live in humble fellowship with our God. We realize that our large dependency on gas consumption is causing environmental changes in our world. It is affecting our environment through particles and sulfates that contribute to acid rain formation which makes lakes, rivers, and streams unsuitable for many fish, birds, plants, and vegetation as well. Gasoline is just too expensive! We pay a very high price economically, environmentally as well as physiologically. Everyone who drives a car today relies on gasoline. If we all purchased electrical motors which are battery operated, we would be replacing fuel pumps for power stations which would be using the same amount of fossil fuel if not more. There may be another way to power our cars. It may mean never having to refuel our automobiles with gasoline or an electrical charge! Charles Stevens is an inventor and CEO of Laser Power Systems. His idea is to replace the gasoline engine with an electric generator that does not require a battery. His idea is to use thorium, a rare earth mineral, with a laser and miniturbines that easily produce enough electricity to power a motor vehicle. There is an abundance of thorium and though it is radioactive, it is much safer than uranium. According to Stevens, if we were to use the thorium engine with 8 grams of thorium it would out-live the life of the vehicle and it would totally eliminate any emissions. 1 gram of thorium produces the equivalent of 7,500 gallons of gasoline. The engine lasts so long that it could be taken from one vehicle to another as it wears out. There are many issues to overcome like the mining facilities to extract it in large enough quantities, and the containment of radioactivity, which he believes can be solved with aluminum foil. The U.S. alone has 440,000 tons. It is believed that Charles Stevens will have a working prototype by 2014. The ultimate goal is not only to replace but to improve the engines we use today. By using thorium we could reduce the air pollution caused by the automobile, we would greatly reduce the many health issues, not only for mankind but for the environment and possibly restore our ecosystem.
3

Luke 12:15 And he went on to say to them all, Watch out and guard yourselves from every kind of greed; because a persons true life is not made up of the things he owns, no matter how rich he may be.

Until this becomes a reality, we can take personal responsibility. We can reduce the use of our consumption of gasoline by planning our trips more wisely, instead of getting in our cars at every whim. We can bicycle as a mode of transportation for short trips as well as for recreation. We stay healthier and help by consuming less gas. We can carpool at every opportunity, and request that our mass transportation be more user-friendly where more of us would use our local busses. By implementing these actions we would be fulfilling our responsibility towards Gods creation. Our Catholic social teachings are a rich treasure of wisdom about forming a just society. It is a beautiful guide of how to live our lives in this modern culture. These social teachings have been based on papal, conciliar, and Episcopal documents. We have taken only one of these teachings which is on the Care for Gods Creation. It states the following: We show our respect for the Creator by our stewardship of creation. Care for the earth is not just an Earth Day slogans; it is a requirement of our faith. We are called to protect people and the planet, living our faith in relationship with all of Gods creation. This environmental challenge has fundamental, moral, and ethical dimensions that cannot be ignored.