Transport: cars account for a total of 6% of CO2 emissions. Heavy goods vehicles account for 4%, aeroplanes for 2% and ships for 2-3%. In reality, compared with the production of goods, transporting them has a relatively small impact: heating a greenhouse on the European continent, for example, emits far more gas than importing foodstuffs from North Africa.
It should be borne in mind, however, that the large container ships operate in a context of no regulation and use low-cost fuel. If we consider passenger transport, the most polluting means in terms of emissions per passenger-kilometre is certainly the aeroplane. The car comes next, then the bus and then the train. The latter is the cleanest means on one condition: that the railway lines have already been built.
Jancovici estimates that a single flight from Paris to Chicago uses up a person's entire sustainable CO2 budget for a year.
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The car, as we use it, is equally unsustainable. An average car uses up its CO2 budget after about 7,000 km a year, whereas average use today is at least double that. It is also well known that cars produce polluting nanoparticles (PM 2.5 and PM 10) recognised as responsible for over 8 million deaths every year worldwide. The chronic respiratory inflammation caused by pollution also helps to weaken immune defences against other pathogens, as almost certainly happened with Covid.
The introduction of the electric car would certainly improve the nanoparticle situation. As things stand, however, it would not significantly improve the climate situation: most of the world's electricity continues to be produced in coal, gas or oil power plants. To this must be added the problem of battery production and disposal. Some of the metals needed to make them will in all likelihood be exhausted before the replacement is complete of the fleet of petrol and diesel cars with electric ones.
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