ECONOMICS - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
10 Reasons Cars Suck |
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by Mickey Z. Counter Punch Entered into the database on Thursday, September 21st, 2006 @ 16:42:25 MST |
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Baby, You Can Ride My Bike There's an interesting courtroom battle shaping up out in California. The state
is attempting to institute new emissions standards for greenhouse gases. Such
regulations could reduce exhaust emissions by 25% in cars and light trucks and
18% in SUVs. California already has the toughest standards in the nation-standards
adopted by 10 states, including New York. This new proposal would surpass federal
emissions standards and is likely to eventually raise the national bar even
higher. Guess who's not happy about this? Among others, DaimlerChrysler Corp., General Motors, the Alliance of Automobile
Manufacturers have filed suit, claiming that California is in violation of the
federal Clean Air Act because the state did not get a waiver from the Environmental
Protection Agency. In other words, the automobile giants are siding
with the EPA and the Clean Air Act to crush regulations designed to address
issues of global warming and human health. You can add this situation to the
top ten list of why cars suck. Here are the other nine reasons: 2. Bumper-to-bumper From 1950 to 1970, the U.S. automobile population grew four times faster
than the human population. Today, there are around 200 million cars in America.
As a result, we Americans spend 8 billion hours per year stuck in traffic. 3. Cars kill people During the twentieth century, 250 million Americans were maimed or injured
in automobile accidents. Every single day in the U.S., an average of 121 people
are killed in car accidents. The leading cause of death for children aged
5 to 14 in New York City is pedestrian automobile accidents. 4. Cars kill animals Automobiles, SUVs, trucks, and other fossil field-burning vehicles kill a
million wild animals per week in the U.S.-not counting tens of thousands of
family pets. 5. Sprawling for dollars During the last century, an area equal to all the arable land in Ohio, Indiana,
and Pennsylvania was paved in the U.S. This area requires maintenance costing
over $200 million a day. (The surreptitious cost of the car culture totals
nearly $464 billion a year in the U.S. alone, much of that going to the sustentation
of a military presence in the Persian Gulf.) 6. Getting warmer? Automobiles emit one-quarter of U.S. greenhouse gases. 7. Oil in our veins The U.S. spends $60 billion per year on foreign oil. Eight million barrels
of oil per day is combusted in U.S. cars. That's 450 gallons per person per
year. 8. They're all wasted Cars create 7 billion pounds of un-recycled scrap and waste annually. 9. Leaving rubber With approximately one billion discarded tires littering our increasingly
paved landscape, meditate upon this: Every tire loses one pound of rubber
per year, spewing minute grains of rubber into the stratosphere and then back
down to find a new home in our water and/or our lungs. 10. Cars are hell During the 40 days of the (first) Gulf War, 146 Americans died keeping the
world safe for petroleum while at home, 4900 Americans died in motor vehicle
accidents. Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
_______________________________ Read from Looking Glass News Nightmares
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