PRIMARY:
CONTRIBUTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE:
An average car, as in a car that gets between 20 and 25 miles to the gallon, releases 7,600 – 9,500 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. (This assumes that said car is driven 10,000 miles per year, while in reality, many urban workers drive more.)
That’s a lot of carbon per city…
URBAN POLLUTION:
Vehicular emissions contribute greatly to the
unhealthy smog
that city residents have learned to deal with on a daily basis. Certain cities in China are known to be filled with a quite visible form of smog; the abundance of smog is due to a combination of vehicular exhaust and industrial emissions.
SECONDARY:
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
At this point in time many countries are dependant on other, oil-rich, countries for their fuel/energy needs. The United States is one such, though recent studies do indicate that the U.S. will be oil-independent by as early as 2030.
RENEWABILITY
Oil is a finite fuel, so at a time X in the relatively near future (judged to be within 150 years) all processes that depend on oil will become unavailable. Therefore, developing a transportation system that is not dependant on finite resources like oil, is vital to preventing the collapse of large portions of societal infrastructure at time X.
CHEAPNESS & AVAILABILITY
Regarding fuels like corn ethanol and other bio-based fuels, people often argue that we have an abundance of the necessary materials, and production would be very cheap. However, this statement becomes difficult to uphold as countries face problems like drought and growing -hungry -populations. No one really wants to have to openly choose between feeding people and feeding machines.
