About 80,000 taxis roam the streets of Cairo. Photo: P!ndaro (Flickr)

In an attempt to clean up the streets of Cairo, new traffic laws have been put into effect earlier this year.

Egypt will no longer renew licenses of taxis older than 20 years, which, according to Reuters, "may be the majority on the clogged, polluted streets of Cairo."

Drivers of antiquated vehicles have three years to replace their vehicles.

Older model taxis are blamed for Cairo's crash-inducing summer smog and traffic congestion (because they break down so often). For a country where one out of five people live on less than $1 a day, some say such drastic changes are unrealistic.

“I don’t understand how they expect us to live,” notes Mahmoud, a Cairo-based taxi driver. “It's not like we make a ton of money to go out and buy a newer car.” Ahmed, also a cab driver, agrees: "This is oppression," he says pounding the wheel of his 1972 Fiat 124. "They will slaughter us! How will I feed my kids?"

Egypt's Minister of Finance, Youssef Boutros Ghali, agrees: "Developing greener technology in all countries is costly, we don't have the money or the resources to spend on improving the environment. We have more pressing problems."

But other Egyptians are trying to persuade their fellow citizens that stringent environmental policies are worth the price. "From a financial point of view, the cost to improve the environment is a direct cost, but the benefits are indirect," says Samir Mowafi, general manager of Egypt's Regional Center for Environment Protection. "People don't consider the environment in their future because the benefits are intangible in the long-term."

Many Egyptians are less optimistic that the rule of law will govern on the streets of Cairo:

"It won't work for sure," says Adil Abdel Rahman, 48, a driver of a Soviet-era Lada. The police, he said, would likely target only the poor for fines, allowing the rich to dodge responsibility."Everyone plays with the law here," he said.

Indeed, as The Huffington Post's Brian Pellot observes, "going green here is typically pursued if and only if such developments produce a different shade of green: financial incentives."