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Is Our Pursuit of Personal Mobility Driving Us to Environmental Destruction?

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Submitted By MadeleineHudson
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Is our pursuit of personal mobility driving us to environmental destruction?
We live in a consumerist society where environmentally damaging modes of transport have been advancing, while less damaging modes have been retreating. To fully understand that our desire for personal mobility is driving us to environmental destruction, three aspects need to be considered. Firstly, examining the various ways in which cars pollute will present evidence that our pursuit of personal mobility is destroying the environment. Secondly, we must examine where this pursuit comes from with the help of theories by Peter Freund and Martin George, Alisdair Aird, Matthew Paterson and Wolfgang Sachs. The final section will demonstrate some solutions to the environmental crisis and whether or not they will save us from environmental destruction. While this analysis will demonstrate that our pursuit of personal mobility is driving us to environmental destruction, it is already clear that the environmental and energy crises ‘are working against continued auto hegemony in transport’ (Freund and Martin: 1993, vii).
Mobility, especially personal mobility, comes at a price- the environment. In John Whitelegg’s Critical Mass, it states that on a global scale, motor vehicles account for one-third of world oil consumption (1997: 114), and that the use of cars has led to a rise in the global mean temperature which by 2025 could have risen by 1 degree (1997:115). The effects of global warming will lead us to environmental destruction. As well as a change in climate, it has affected rainfall patterns, increased tropical storms, damaged agricultural production, and led to a rise in sea levels and coastal erosion. Whitelegg goes on to say that the average concentration of carbon dioxide increased from pre-industrial levels of 270 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to 335 ppmv in 1991, and that this

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