Climate Action — Go Car-Free
Of all Climate Actions — going car-free is considered to be the most effective of all changes you can make. That’s all you really need to know.
On a personal level
Going car-free reduces a person’s yearly climate footprint with 2.4 ton co2e. That is a significant amount of emissions for anyone. Europeans, who have an average climate footprint of 6.2 ton co2, would reduce their footprint with 40% by going car-free. North Americans, would reduce their climate footprint by 20% if they would go car-free.
How much of your carbon footprint is caused by the use of your car (if you own one, and if you don’t — good good). If you haven’t yet, go calculate your carbon footprint to see how much the car represents of your footprint.
Cars Impact In Society
Cars and vans are the cause of 18% of all co2 emissions in Europe, and 17% of all co2 emissions in the US. Worldwide road transport is responsible for 20% of all emissions. A substantial part of the total sum. What would happen if we all went car-free? Carbon-emission wise the answer is clear — we would reduce our total emissions with about one fifth. That is significant. And that is why it is considered so effective.
In Sweden, for example, if you combine all the distance traveled in an average day, 75% is being made by car. In 2017, transport by train in Sweden was the cause of 41k tCO₂ emissions, domestic air travel 553k tCO₂ and road transport 15.497k tCO₂ — 377 times more than that of the train, and 26 times more than train and domestic air travel combined. The impact of Swedes travel by car equals that of their travel by air, domestic and international combined. In times when air travel has been hotly debated, it’s worth thinking about, and consider the effects of car travel.
The climate effect of travelling alone in a car, is per kilometer roughly equal to that of travelling by plane.
It should be noted that the estimated reduction of co2 emissions from going car-free is based on a change in transport mode to biking or walking. If you instead replace the car with public transport it “has been shown to reduce emissions by 26%–76%” (Chester et al 2013). That obviously depends on what mode of public transport you replace the car with. If you replace the car with subway or train the reduction is 90%.
On top of all this, there are other side effects of going car-free. Both personal and societal. Replacing the car with biking would be beneficial for our health. It would result in cleaner air, reduce the needs of roads and parking lots enabling more compact cities and more green space and most likely push public transport to become even better.
So am I saying it is easy to get rid of the car, or that our societies will become car-free? No. I don’t think it’s easy, and in many cases, those who are using cars do that because they need to, but many people are also most likely using cars because it’s convenient and one must acknowledge that it is. At least in sometimes. And I’m the first to admit I think it’s amazing going on road trips.
But the question wasn’t if it was easy — the question was if it was an effective Climate Action and it undoubtedly is.
