Cars are responsible for combusting eight million barrels of oil every day, contributing to nearly a quarter of total global greenhouse emissions.
In America, cars have killed six times as many people as have died in combat during the last hundred years and injured a further 250 million.
The manufacturing process itself generates more pollution per car than ten years of average driving, with 29 tons of waste generated for every ton of car.
Each unit involves the assembly of some 15,000 parts by an industry which uses more resources than any other – 20% of the world’s steel, 50% of the lead and 60% of the rubber.
40,000 new cars roll off the production line when we go to sleep every night and, in America, there are more registered car owners than registered voters.
It is now estimated that there are well over half a billion vehicles on the planet which, at current rates, could rise to one billion by 2020.
Aviation is the worst polluting from of transport per passenger mile, generating nearly as much carbon dioxide each year as the total population of Africa.
Aircraft produce large amounts of toxic emissions which threaten human health, including nitrous oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), linked to increased cancer rates under airport flight paths.
Aviation is projected to become the largest single source of greenhouse emissions and already accounts for around 10% of climatic change. Short-haul flights produce triple the CO2 emissions per passenger mile as rail travel.
Airlines pay no duty or VAT on aviation fuel and there is no VAT on either air tickets or new aircraft.
The city of Los Angeles generates nearly 1% of total global greenhouse emissions, over 30% of the land mass is devoted to the car and some 40% of the population suffer from respiratory diseases due to vehicle emissions.
The number of cars in the US – 1.9 per household – now exceeds the number of drivers – 1.75.
It is now cheaper to fly from London to south-west France than take a train to the UK city of Bath.
The carbon emissions of US vehicles are roughly equivalent to those of the entire Japanese economy, the fourth largest carbon emitter.
Over 1.5 billion gallons of petrol are used every year by US truckers leaving their engines on idle overnight so that they can keep the heating or air conditioning on.
