The real costs of transportation.

• Author: Fitz, Don

As gas and oil supplies dwindle, more people find it impossible to pay the price of heating their homes. Simultaneously, epidemics of asthma and other diseases associated with burning fossil fuels continuously worsen.

Cars are a big problem, both for global warming and the exhaustion of oil reserves. With less than 5% of the world's population, the US produces 25% of carbon emissions. [1] Transportation causes a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. [2]

The wastefulness of the automobile is so staggering that "only about 10% of the chemical energy stored in the fuel tank actually drives the wheels." [3] Amory Lovins computes that, with a 10% efficient car with a driver, passenger and luggage weighing 300 pounds (which is about 10% of the car weight), "only 1% of the fuel's energy in the vehicle tank actually moves the payload." [4]

There seems to be an unending stream of stories in the corporate media that biofuels and hybrid cars are the answer. Biofuels promise to reduce oil use and decrease pollution by making fuel from corn and soy instead of petroleum. By generating their own electricity, hybrid cars should emit fewer greenhouse gases because they use less gasoline.

Such techno-fixes look at only one part of transportation: the use of fuel to make a machine go. In reality, transportation is a system for moving around. That system requires energy for manufacture and disposal of machines, land use for moving and storing the things that move, many related impacts of transportation, and an ideology that weaves transportation into a society.

To get an idea of the real cost of transportation, look at the table which lists types of transportation systems across the top and consequences down the left side. [5] To get an approximation of real costs, put a "-10" for each consequence of gasoline. This represents current negative social and environmental effects of petroleum dependency. As you read this article, put negative or positive numbers for consequences of each type of transportation. A "-10" indicates that it is just as bad as gas; a "+10" that it is as good as gas is bad; and numbers close to "0" indicate consequences that are less clear.

The horror of the car

Let's look at why gasoline gets a "-10" in every area.

1. Manufacture. According to Richard Heinberg, "more than half of the energy consumption attributable to each vehicle on the road occurs in the manufacturing process." [6] Thus, unless an alternative mode of transportation has a significant reduction in manufacturing, it is not even addressing half the issue.

2. Operation. Driving cars results in huge releases of carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas that causes global warming. Discussions of transportation typically limit themselves to this phase.

3. Disposal. A car battery has one of the widest arrays of toxic chemicals short of a nuclear dump. They contaminate areas throughout the world and poison countless generations.

4. Land use for roads. Roads break up neighborhoods, farms and animal habitat and contribute directly to global warming. Paved surfaces convert sunlight to heat and do not convert sunlight to photosynthesis as do the plants they eliminate.

5. Land use for storage. What could be uglier and ruin more urban areas than parking lots? Vast expanses of parking lots contribute to "urban warming," which makes cities warmer than the surrounding countryside. [7]

   The problem is not just parking lots at shopping centers, work, school, church, hospitals and sporting events--we have our own little parking lots at home. The millions of little driveways to home parking garages (which are mini-parking lots) comprise an extremely inefficient use of land and are contributors to urban warming.

   [TABLE 1 OMITTED]

6. Other effects. Negative effects from cars which are even less likely to make it into official equations include horrible pollution from burning off ("flaring") unwanted gas from pipelines in Nigeria and elsewhere and over a million animals killed on US highways annually. Health effects from toxic automobile emissions could fill many volumes (and probably have).

7. Ideology of idolatry. I remember going to church as a kid and hearing the preacher say that "idolatry" is not limited to...