People have plenty keeping them busy on their morning commutes to work or school. One topic likely on the top of their minds is their daily contribution to global warming – a looming issue taking center stage in recent decades for its widespread impact on the environment. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 27% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States are due to transportation – a good proportion of which comes from everyday morning commutes.
In recent years, global warming and climate change has taken a front seat in world politics, with the United States recently rejoining the Paris Climate Change Agreement in January 2021. The international agreement between nearly 200 United Nations members vows to take action in reducing carbon emissions in order to limit global temperature increase during the past century to 2 degrees Celsius, if not less. According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), since 1975, the average global temperature rise per decade has been steadily increasing to around 0.2 degrees Celsius. The recent impacts are widespread, with a higher rate of heat related illnesses, wildfires, and water scarcity for people around the globe. Global warming can also result in more severe weather conditions that can put agriculture at risk, creating the potential for global food shortages for decades to come.
From a global standpoint, more developed countries such as the United States have had a significant impact on carbon emissions than many other countries around the world. In fact, according to the 2021 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), least developed countries (LDCs) make up about 14% of the global population, but only 1.1% of global carbon emissions. This statistic may be unsurprising, as nearly 90% of American households own a car, while personal vehicles may be extraordinarily hard to come by in many LDCs.
What may be less obvious is the inherent injustice of how climate change impacts less developed countries when compared to more developed countries, such as the United States. As many at the 2021 UNCTAD emphasized, citizens of the most developed nations had 23 times the carbon footprint as citizens of LDCs, however, 69% of climate-disaster related deaths occurred in LDCs. As people living in a country lucky enough to afford such a large stake in the fuel economy, Americans have the choice to both understand the size of and look to reduce their personal carbon footprint.
As transportation via gas-powered cars make up a significant contribution to global carbon emissions, many may think to start reducing their carbon footprint by first looking at alternatives to commuting by car. In fact, Dr. Joanna Moody, a consultant with the World Bank’s Transport Global Knowledge Unit, recently spoke with the Energy Initiative at MIT about how potential alternatives to car travel can be promoted. In this interview, the importance of developing sustainable transport infrastructure is emphasized, with Moody pointing out that, “The types of mobility systems that we invest in, the types of cities that we develop — they are gonna determine what those transportation emissions look like for the next 15 years.”
Moody states that increasing the convenience of travel alternatives by developing bus and bike lanes will promote commute alternatives to those who travel by car. When people have a multitude of commute options, they will likely take the most available one, so a potential solution is to simply increase the accessibility of public transportation. As Moody says, “Allocating our space on our streets better is a low-cost, near-term, within-our-jurisdiction way of really starting to change our different travel modes, to the most sustainable, the most socially responsible choice.” Considering common complaints over public transportation in cities such as Boston, these issues are minor at worst. One could imagine a world where Boston improves upon its current bus transport infrastructure, building upon its bus lanes and increasing the area served so that residents may have a similar decrease in their daily carbon footprint.
The impact of reducing daily commute carbon emissions has already been shown in recent times, with transportation carbon emissions falling nearly 11% as a result of remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the EPA. It may also be possible for several industries to develop support for longer-term virtual work opportunities, reducing the need for transportation to work at all. However, UNCTAD projects that world economic growth will slow to 2.5% in 2022 and drop to 2.2% in 2023. The global slowdown would leave real GDP still below its pre-pandemic trend, costing the world more than $17 trillion – close to 20% of the world’s income. As for future research into policies that can best support changes in transportation infrastructure, projects such as MIT Energy Initiative’s Mobility of the Future study are currently underway. The project in particular looks to study potential transportation alternatives and methods of reducing carbon-based fuel consumption in the United States and China, which are the two leading light-vehicle markets over the course of three years. It is the hope of projects such as the Mobility of the Future study, as well as dozens of others across institutions around the world to come up with collective models and solutions in order to best optimize future modes of travel to provide globally sustainable alternatives for current travel methods.
