My Other Car is a Bright Green City by Alex Steffen
Our vehicle emissions are a major climate change contributor, but what comes out of the tailpipe is only a fraction of the total climate impact of driving a car, and the climate impact is in turn only a part of the environmental and social damage cars cause. Improving mileage will not fix these problems.
First, there are the other non-exhaust direct impacts of the cars themselves. Studies appear to show that between fifteen and twenty-two percent of all the energy ever consumed by a vehicle is used in its manufacture; the sources disagree, but the procurement of the materials used to make and maintain that car (and then dispose of it at the end of its life) may mean that almost half of the direct climate impact of a car never comes out of its tailpipe. (For an excellent discussion of the difficulty of assessing these numbers, check out the comments on Erica’s Prius post.)
Second, lest we suffer from carbon blindness, it’s worth stopping to consider all the car-related pollution that has little or nothing to do with energy used to make or move that car.
Road-building itself disrupts watershed hydrology. The crappy cars we drive today spew toxins in every direction — motor oil leaks, lubricants burn, brakes wear away, particulates are thrown off the engine, batteries erode. Then, too, keeping roads clear involves road salt and roadside herbicides….
…Development estimates that the greenhouse gasses emitted while building and maintaining roads add an additional 45% to the average car’s annual climate footprint. And we continue to build roads at a rapid rate, all across North America….
…we most need to adopt one solution that leverages almost all the others: stop sprawl and build well-designed compact communities. That’s because the land-use patterns in our communities dictate not only how much we drive, but how sustainable we’re able to be on all sort of fronts.
