On a per-capita basis, the U.S. comes in first place among the world’s major contaminators – Only heavily subsidized public transportation will change things

ON THE EVE OF THE INTERNATIONAL STUDENT PROTESTS OVER CLIMATE CHANGE, LET THE POLITICIANS CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING:

I am living outside of Washington DC. It’s as costly, or perhaps more costly for someone to go to work on the metro system than to drive into the city. The round trip from the Van Dorn metro station which is the closest to where I live, comes to almost $10. The metro parking lot costs nearly $5 but you have to get there before 8:00 AM, otherwise you park in an adjacent parking lot and it comes a lot more. If you take a metro bus to another station, it comes to an additional $4. If you purchase a monthly metro card, you reduce the cost just by a few bucks. 

These rates are grotesque if you consider the urgency of the problem of climate change. Drastic measures are necessary to substantially reduce contamination levels and that includes reducing the use of cars. The only way that is going to happen is to slap a hefty tax on automobile and gasoline sales and use the revenue to subsidize public transportation. Urban public transportation should cost no more than 25-50 cents. Politicians can talk all they want about their commitment to combating global warming, but without a major overhaul of the system of transportation, there will be no major breakthroughs. And the United States will continue to be the worlds largest per capita contaminator among those nations most responsible for CO2 emissions.