Name: Can We Gas Up... Without Gas?: Crash Course Climate & Energy #6
Uploaded: 2023-02-23T05:09:17.000Z
Duration: 14 min 10 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

﻿Our ability to get to faraway places fast is a  marvel. Transportation allows us to share ideas,  

see loved ones, seek out all the  cool cat cafes and glacier museums,  

even swap our best inventions. So let’s say I’m on an expedition

to my favorite glacier in Iceland, and  I forget my favorite jacket.

In just a few days, I can have it shipped to  me, and I’ll finally feel complete again.   

But for as magical as that is,  transportation is also one of  

the most visible and personal ways we’re  transforming the Earth’s climate.

Cars, ships, and planes release  heat-trapping greenhouse gases into  

the atmosphere every day. Which means that,  to decarbonize transportation,

we’ll have to take to the road, the air, and the sea.

Hi hi! I'm M Jackson and this is  Crash Course Climate and Energy.

When it comes to climate change, it’s easy  to point fingers at transportation.

If you have a car, say your beat-up Camry, hotrod,  or a hotrod Camry it’s probably the most  

visible source of emissions in your life. And transportation is an important piece of the  

emissions puzzle. Planes, cars, cruise ships  — the whole industry — transportation spews  

8.2 billion tons of greenhouse gases  into the atmosphere every year.

That’s 16% of the around 51 billion tons we  release annually — and the fourth-largest  

fossil fuel emitting industry. And that’s just the  fuel required to power vehicles. That’s not even  

including the fossil fuel emissions required  to refine the oil before it gets to the pump,  

or to produce the steel the cars are  made of in the first place.

So, it’s not an insignificant slice of the gassy  pie! Which, gross, by the way. Who wrote this?

Almost half of the emissions from  transportation comes from personal vehicles: 

the cars, vans, motorcycles, and SUVs  we drive in our daily lives.

The other half comes from all the other vehicles:  cargo ships, semi-trucks, planes, buses, and more,  

transporting lots of stuff or people. Decarbonizing both realms will mean 

fewer greenhouse emissions and less  pollution for the entire planet.

But decarbonizing transportation  also has a second major benefit:  

Beyond helping slow the global effects of climate  change, it could also be a step towards correcting  

environmental inequities — things like air,  water, and noise pollution that disproportionately  

affect some more than others. For example, many highways in the  

U.S. have intentionally been built right  through low-income communities.

That means the people who live there —  often, people of color — have had to bear  

the brunt of transportation’s air and water  pollution, and experience unjust physical and  

mental health outcomes as a result. So, decarbonizing the vehicles that drive  

by every day would have dual benefits.  It would lower carbon levels globally,  

but could also be one step towards improving  specific living environments that, in many cases,  

the residents didn’t ask for. Wherever you live, there is good news!

The first step to tackling  decarbonization is clear and underway.

To decarbonize our rides, we must first  electrify them. And what we can’t electrify,  

we’ll have to make as efficient as possible  and supply with alternative fuels.

When it comes to personal transportation,  you’ve probably seen electric vehicles

in the wild by this point. Instead of having to fuel up at a gas station, 

they can plug in at homes or grocery stores,  or cat cafes, and zoom from point A to point B

on rechargeable batteries. Because they run on electricity,  

these vehicles release fewer emissions  and air pollutants than gas-powered cars, 

no matter where they’re driven. But: an electric car is only as sustainable 

as the electricity it’s plugged into. That means a car charged on renewable electricity

comes closer to zero emissions than  one driven off of a coal-burning power plant.

This is why carbon-free  electricity is such a big deal: 

It’s involved in decarbonizing all of our other  industries, including how we get places.

But carbon-free electricity isn’t the main barrier  to electric vehicles. There are bunches of reasons 

they’re still not everywhere.  One is charging station access.

Most electric cars can be plugged in at  home, with similar outlets in the garage 

to what your power tools use. But if you drive long distances 

without a predictable place to  plug in, that’s a problem.

Globally, more charging stations are being built  every year, especially in large cities.

But for electric vehicles to really take off,  there’s a need for more charging infrastructure 

in more places — especially rural areas. Governments and private entities have a role  

to play in promoting this, by offering  incentives, even updating building codes  

on places like parking garages so that  more spaces have electricity access.

Another challenge, though, is the  pesky specter of the Green Premium: 

the cost difference between low-carbon tech and  the conventional, carbon-emitting choice.

For instance, people in Europe and China have been  quicker to adopt electric vehicles than people  

in the U.S. In parts of Europe, sky-high gas  prices already match the cost of electric cars, 

which means the Green Premium there is lower. But in the U.S., this hasn’t always been the case. 

In 2021, almost two-thirds of Americans  thought electric cars were better for  

the environment… but more expensive. And only  40% said they would consider buying one.

But, the cost to build electric cars  has dropped, as government subsidies 

and cheaper batteries drive prices down. And the closer an electric car’s upfront cost  

gets to its gas-powered equivalent,  the easier it should be to afford  

plugging in over gassing up.  That said, manufacturers have tended 

to focus on making luxury electric vehicles  instead of affordable ones. And the metals  

in batteries aren’t always easy to come by  — not to mention the environmental impacts  

of mining those rare Earth metals. So, although electrifying our rides is  

the end goal, the journey there  is probably not going to be one  

seamless electric slide into the sunset. I mean, we hope it would be. We’d love for that  

to be a big part of the choreography, if not at  least the grand finale. But we’ll probably need  

to learn some other dance moves along the way. And one potential dance partner is… 

government policy. Trust me, they’ve got some moves.  Even if they step on your toes sometimes.

Some countries are banning the sale of  petroleum-powered vehicles. France plans  

to ban them by 2040, and the UK by 2030. And some countries offer cash rebates or tax  

incentives to electric car buyers. But as we transition away from gas-powered  

cars, we’ll likely still be  sharing the road with them.    

So another policy move is adjusting  fuel economy standards — basically,  

requiring manufacturers to build more  efficient cars, which emit less carbon.

There’s also congestion pricing,  or charging drivers a fee on 

high-trafficked roads. The old “discourage  driving, reduce emissions” trick.

But congestion pricing is most equitable  when people have alternative ways of  

getting where they need to go. If we want to encourage people to drive less

— and reduce the half of transportation  emissions that come from personal vehicles —  

we also have to design cities friendly  to that, with sidewalks, bike lanes, 

and robust public transit systems.  Some surveys suggest that having good public  

transport and ride-sharing services can lead  to as much as a 35% drop in car ownership —  

and the emissions that come with it. But designing cities that are truly  

friendly for everyone means leveraging the most  powerful tool we’ve got: people themselves.

Tulsa, Oklahoma is a sprawling area of suburbs,  

rural fringes, and an urban core. And it can  be tough to get around without a car.

But it helps if you’ve got a 12-meter bus.  That’s what the Indian Nations Council of Governments

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