| > let’s be clear that “everyone who drives” collectively generated this risk through pollution. No, let's be clear that everyone who lives in the developed and developing world collectively generated this risk by living in said world. In the US, the transportation sector as a whole accounts for only 29% of our collective greenhouse gas emissions [0]. Within that sector, passenger cars only account for 20% of the 29%, or 5.8% of our total greenhouse gas emissions in the country. That's still a lot of greenhouse gases, but it's barely the tip of the iceberg of our total generation in the US, and the US itself only accounts for ~12% of the world's emissions. Picking on passenger cars for pollution is similar to picking on green lawns during drought: sure, it's something that your average Joe can stop doing to feel like they're helping, and people who water their lawns make for a fun villain if you're into that kind of thing, but even if you managed to get that use case down to 0% of what it is currently you wouldn't even have begun to solve the actual problem. [0] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... |
You need to account for light duty trucks here too. Merely including "passenger cars" is wrong since enormous numbers of Americans are driving pickups/SUVs/etc as their personal vehicles. That would push personal transportation to 16.5% of our total GHG emissions.