Green Transportation 101
Getting there with less gas
Transportation is responsible for approximately a third of the average American's global warming impact. It's also one of the factors that we have the most control over — where little changes can make a big difference.
America is car country...
Burning fuel produces carbon dioxide, one of the most important greenhouse gasses responsible for the global warming we're now experiencing. Most transportation — by car, bus, or airplane — requires burning fuel. In fact, Americans use more than 380 million gallons of gasoline per day! For each gallon of gasoline burned, about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. For the average car that drives 12,500 miles per year, that's almost a pound of CO2 per mile — or 11,450 pounds per year — about enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool!
...but we're jet-setters too
Americans also like to fly a lot. We take more than 500 million airplane rides per year. It's harder to calculate the CO2 emissions of an airplane flight since it depends on the length of the flight, (airplanes burn more fuel on takeoff than when cruising at 30,000 feet) the type of the airplane, how many people are aboard and other factors. A round-trip flight from New York to Chicago results in about 650 pounds of CO2 emissions; a cross-country trip produces about 2,000 pounds.
