Welcome to the Climate Fwd: newsletter. The New York Times climate team emails readers once a week with stories and insights about climate change. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. By Tik Root What would happen if everybody in the United States cut back on driving? We’re not talking about getting rid of your car, just using it a little bit less. It turns out that even driving just 10 percent less — if everyone did it — would have a big impact on greenhouse gas emissions. That’s because Americans drive trillions of miles every year , helping to make transportation the biggest contributor to United States greenhouse gas emissions. In 2017, light-duty vehicles in the United States (including cars, S.U.V.s, pickups and most of the vehicles used for everyday life) produced 1,098 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents . That’s about one-fifth of the country’s total emissions footprint . A 10 percent cut, therefore, would be roughly 110 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, or the same as taking about 28 coal-fired power plants offline for a year. To achieve such a reduction, every American driver would, on average, have to cut about 1,350 […]
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