More reasons to drive less

According to the most accurate real-time carbon counter out there, carbon is being released into the atmosphere at a rate of 800 tonnes per second. That adds up to 3,642,295,260,000 (that's over 3 trillion) tonnes and counting, as of right now as I'm writing this. To put it in perspective, 3 trillion seconds is 100,000 years. That's a lot of carbon. That's also a lot of warming of the atmosphere. And as we know, excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can cause severe weather such as more severe hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and droughts.

Two more reasons are views like these:





While drivers are isolated from everything around them in their steel cages, riding a bike lets you feel the wind in your hair, hear the birds chirping, and see beautiful sights like this that drivers would miss as they're zipping by, thinking about what they're going to have for dinner or talking on their cell phones.

Transportation Liberation, as presented by ObbieZ and RoZ at the
"Towards Carfree Cities" conference in Portland, OR, June 2008.

Don't believe in global warming? It doesn't matter

There are a lot of skeptics out there who don't believe that humans are causing global warming. They believe that it's a natural phenomenon. Then there are people who don't believe it's happening at all. Because of these views, they don't believe that it's necessary to try to change the way we as a society do things.

Well, here's an argument you might not have heard before.

It doesn't matter if you believe in global warming or not.

There are reasons other than global warming for doing things to help the environment, because those things also help us be healthier. We know that the emissions from cars cause smog. You can't say you don't believe in smog, because you can see it in the air.

This is a picture of the sky over Los Angeles:


This is a picture of what the sky should look like:



We know that smog increases rates of asthma in children and adults, it causes damage to the heart and lungs, it reduces lung function, even in healthy people, it increases the risk of lung cancer, and a Swedish study recently found that people who drive to work as opposed to those who walk, bike or take the bus, have a 70% greater risk of having a heart attack. The World Health Organization estimates that 3 million people die each year from air pollution.
This is a problem we need to do something about, and all of these effects from smog are easily preventable.

Doing things to reduce smog, like driving your car less (or not at all) not only help the environment, but they also help us.