1. Traffic: From 1950 to 1970, the U.S. automobile population grew four times faster than the human
population. As a result, we Americans spent nearly 500,000 years stuck in traffic in 2007 - nearly 4.2
billion hours.
2. Cars Kill Children: The leading cause of death for children aged 5 to 14 in New York City is
pedestrian automobile accidents.
3. Cars Kill Animals: Automobiles, SUVs, trucks, and other fossil field-burning vehicles kill a million
wild animals per week in the U.S. - not counting tens of thousands of family pets.
4. Sprawl: During the last century, an area equal to all the arable land in Ohio, Indiana, and
Pennsylvania was paved in the U.S.
5. Waste: Cars create 7 billion pounds of un-recycled scrap and waste annually and approximately one
billion discarded tires are littering our increasingly paved landscape.
6. Global Warming: More than 333 million tons of carbon dioxide are emitted by U.S. cars each year, -
that's more than one-fifth of the nation's total carbon dioxide emissions.
7. Oil Consumption: The U.S consumes about 21 million barrels of oil per day. 10,000 gallons of
gasoline are burned in the U.S. every second.
8. Car Wars: During the 40 days of the (first) Gulf War, 146 Americans died keeping the world safe for
petroleum while at home, 4900 Americans died in motor vehicle accidents.
Mickey Z, Planet Green, 26/8/09