JavaScript appears to be disabled on this computer. Please click here to see any active alerts. When shopping for a new car, look for fuel efficient vehicles with low greenhouse gas emissions. These cars can help the environment while potentially saving you money on fuel costs at the pump.
Follow these tips:. In any case, some degree of pollution is associated with all of these components, much of it due to the energy consumption, air pollution, and releases of toxic substances that occur when automobiles are manufactured and distributed. Most of the environmental impact associated with motor vehicles occurs when they are used, due to pollution in their exhaust and pollution associated with supplying the fuel.
In the United States, nearly all of today's automobiles use gasoline; a lesser number use diesel fuel. In some areas, various alternative fuels are being introduced, but these are not widely available for most drivers.
When gasoline, diesel, or other fuels are burned in car engines, combustion is never perfect, and so a mix of hazardous pollutants comes out the tailpipe. If combustion were perfect and didn't create noxious by-products, the exhaust would contain only water vapor and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide CO 2 isn't directly harmful to health, at least not in low concentrations. After all, co 2 is also what we exhale after "burning" the calories in the food we eat.
However, co 2 from fossil fuels like gasoline and diesel is very harmful to the environment because it causes global warming-more on this pollutant shortly. Motor fuel is itself a product and so, like a car, environmental damage occurs throughout its lifecycle as well. For gasoline and diesel, the product lifecycle begins at the oil well and ends when the fuel is burned in the engine.
Fuel cycle impacts are the forms of pollution and other environmental damage that occur between the oil well and the fuel tank. Gasoline and diesel fuel are poisonous to humans, plants, and animals, and their vapors are toxic. Other energy sources have their own fuel cycles. With battery-powered electric vehicles, for example, no fuel is burned onboard the vehicle, and so nearly all of the fuel-cycle pollution and energy use occurs at electric power plants and in producing the fuels that run the power plants.
Many of the same air pollutants that spew from vehicle tailpipes are also spewed from power plants and oil refineries as well as the tanker trucks that deliver gasoline to your local filling station. Air pollution isn't the only problem associated with these petroleum-based fuels. Other industries could learn much from this. Spread the message. Make a donation. Or update your wardrobe with clothes from our modest but growing selection of sustainably sourced and crafted clothes.
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