Cars poison living things, pollute the environment

Editor,

I am glad I have no car. I would not keep a car if you gave me one for free. For more than 12 years, I have had no car here, and I enjoy this freedom.

I save much money and many resources — oil, metals and rubber. I avoid all parking and traffic tickets. I have no hassles with cars, repairs, insurance, flat tires, monthly payments, depreciation, vandalism, theft, accidents, road rage and finding a parking space. I reduce my chances of being stopped by a gun-toting and dangerous official gang — the police.

I walk to most places in town. Our legs are great doctors. Cars spoil us, making our bodies fat, lazy and sick.

I rarely travel far out of town. I take the bus, train or carpool. Planes use twice as much energy per passenger-mile as trains. Jet exhaust high in the atmosphere adds to the poison blanket heating our global climate.

The United States is number one worldwide in emissions of per capita air pollutants and gasoline consumption, major oil spills affecting coastal areas and use of cars instead of available public transportation.

Less than 10 percent of the world’s people can afford cars. Imagine how much sicker our mother Earth would be if all people drove cars like most Americans.

Cars vomit carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxides, benzenes, methane aldehydes and VOCs, causing lung disease, cancer and poisoned immune systems.

I hate how highways, parking lots and garages swallow up millions of acres of good soil needed to grow food for our mushrooming human family and for trees to provide life-giving oxygen.

Cars are one major cause of global warming, bringing massive catastrophes to us and the environment.

Most Americans are addicted to driving their cars as much as their dollars and time allow. Most Americans regard this insane deadly addiction as their absolute right — far more important than freedom of speech and far more precious than the Iraqis and Ecuadorians lives and homelands of destroyed in the mad pursuit of oil.

We borrow the Earth from those who come after us. What right do I have to leave the Earth at my death more poisoned from my damn selfish abuse than it was at my birth? We can wise up and change our stupid ways.

-Don Schrader

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