Climate Lobby
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Please look carefully at the chart above. What is the
biggest contributor to climate change? It’s not the red sector, but the blue
one, transportation. See the numbers? Why is this chart skewed to hide the complicity of our
cars?
Of all oil consumed in the U.S., 83% fuels transportation.
Within transportation, cars and light trucks burn three-fifths of the oil. The
quickest way to reduce your carbon footprint is to go car-free.
Government Investment in
Transportation
|
|||||
Transportation Budget
|
Per Capita
|
Transit + Rail
|
Per Capita
|
||
USDOT
|
$90,900,000,000
|
$289.58
|
$22,274,000,000
|
$70.96
|
25%
|
ODOT
|
$4,136,000,000
|
$1,060.78
|
$145,000,000
|
$37.19
|
4%
|
Benton
County
|
$15,806,640
|
$182.88
|
$2,319,898
|
$26.84
|
15%
|
Corvallis
|
$7,900,861
|
$143.66
|
$2,948,750
|
$53.62
|
37%
|
Total
|
$95,059,707,501
|
$1,676.91
|
$22,424,268,648
|
$188.60
|
24%
|
Politicians are positioning themselves as actively fighting
climate change, but when we follow the money, it becomes obvious how
hypocritical they are.
Consider the infrastructure installed by our government at
every level to support personal automobiles. The U.S., with its
214 million motor vehicles, has paved 3.9 million miles of roads, enough to
circle the earth at the equator 157 times. In addition to roads, cars require
parking space. Imagine a parking lot for 214 million cars and trucks. If that
is too difficult, try visualizing a parking lot for 1,000 cars and then imagine
what 214,000 of these would look like. Satellite
imagery might help.
However we visualize it, the U.S. area devoted to roads and parking lots covers an estimated 61,000 square miles or 39,040,000 acres. If you study any one of these paved areas, you will discover a microclimate approaching a barren desert. Plants are eliminated, soil compressed, hydrological systems disrupted and polluted, and animals become road kill. Multiply that microclimate to a global scale and you begin to realize the impact of pavement.
However we visualize it, the U.S. area devoted to roads and parking lots covers an estimated 61,000 square miles or 39,040,000 acres. If you study any one of these paved areas, you will discover a microclimate approaching a barren desert. Plants are eliminated, soil compressed, hydrological systems disrupted and polluted, and animals become road kill. Multiply that microclimate to a global scale and you begin to realize the impact of pavement.
Our challenge is to move every level of
government away from doing the bidding of the asphalt lobby and toward using
traffic demand management to make it easier for everybody to use the most
efficient, practical modes of transportation – walking, cycling, rail, bus, and
jitney. Our opponents include big oil and the automotive industry, some very
powerful corporations.
The focal point of this struggle is the state Department of
Transportation. The Oregon Department of Transportation issued ODOT’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy
Report in April of 2012. To paraphrase, it says ”burning fossil fuels has
caused the climate to change, so we’ll have to work very hard to keep the
highways open so people can keep burning fossil fuels.”
ODOT issues permits for megaloads of tar sands mining
equipment and refuses
to hear any public opinion. Can we get our legislators to listen to our opinion
of the $4B ODOT spends each year destroying our climate?
posted by Vernon Huffman at 1:23 PM
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