Quote:
Originally Posted by **********
I hear what you're saying, but I think you're missing the point. Look at it this way : Cargo ships, despite how much they pollute, are probably pretty efficient because they can move so much, so fast, so far, with "so much" being the point.
A bus is more efficient than a car because it moves more people from point A to point B. Even though a bus may pollute more as a vehicle, it pollutes less, costs less, and uses less energy, per-passenger.
Or to look at it another way, imagine if each cargo container was moved one at a time, on a truck lets say, from China to the US, across super long bridges. The amount of energy used and pollution spewed would be much higher than shipping them by a massive cargo carrying boat.
One of the most in efficient ways to move people is with cars because most of the time, a big 4 passenger car has only 1 person in it. The amount of energy it takes to get that person from home to work is maybe only 10% of what is used to move the car (Just a guess). The rest of the energy is lost to noise, heat and exhaust.
This is why the push towards fuel efficient cars or alternative energy cars makes so much sense: You should be able to get someone from point A to point B with less energy, or cleaner energy, or both. A 4 Cyl car does exactly the same thing as an 8 Cyl car does getting the guy from work to home, with less energy and less pollution. (Less fun too perhaps, but you get my point).
Peace.
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Then the real solution is not to import cheap shit from china and cut down on transportation. Go back to consuming what is grown, produced and manufactured locally and cut that part of the transportation chain out completely.
What is being missed is that these guys are making their point, just like environmentalists who like to preach from the pulpit. Both are equally as annoying, and most people who like to drive compact, efficient cars, or those that like to drive larger, less efficient vehicles, do so without bothering anyone about their personal choices.