Take Personal Action
Give your car a rest
Walking and biking
When you travel on your own two feet or ride a bicycle, you reduce global warming pollution to zero. Nada. Nothing. Simple as that.
When you drive, you release 20 lbs. of carbon dioxide pollution per gallon of gas.
Let’s put that into perspective. Say twice a week, you rent a DVD from a store a mile from your home, and you always drive there in a car that gets about 21 miles per gallon.
In one year, this trivial amount of driving releases almost 400 lbs of global warming pollution. And that’s what you’ll save by walking or biking. Plus 60 dollars worth of gas.
Good for your health, too: walking and biking are great ways to stay fit while fighting global warming at the same time, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The CDC has crunched the numbers, and reports that walking even a half hour per day could help you lose 13 pounds a year; if every American did it, we’d reduce global warming pollution by 64 million tons annually.
Carpooling
This one’s almost as simple as walking and biking. One car carrying four people to and from work every day releases just 25% of the carbon dioxide pollution that four separate cars would. Plus, if you rotate drivers every week, three of you can work or nap!
Mass transit
The key to mass transit is the word “mass.” The more we use it, the more global warming pollution we eliminate. That’s because a bus or train releases more CO2 into the air than a car, but a bus or train holds many, many more people and thus keeps all those cars off the road.
A bus with just seven passengers is more fuel efficient than the average car.
A full bus? Six times more efficient.
And a full train? A whopping 15 times more efficient.
But just how much carbon dioxide pollution does riding the bus save? Well, imagine that you and 49 of your neighbors all drive your own cars 20 miles round-trip every day between home and work.
Together, you’re releasing 118 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year.
If all of you took the bus? 92 tons.
If all of you took the train? 61 tons.
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