The cities
nowadays are designed taking into account that cars exist. If such argument
wasn't true, there wouldn't be residential, industrial, and recreational areas,
amongst others. If we want to go to the market, we take the car, if we go to school,
we take the car, when we go to work, we take the car. All of this is true if we
are lucky enough to afford a car, because if not the public transportation will
be waiting for us with a deceiving smile. The cars and buses emit carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases, which in turn pollute the air making it toxic to
humans. With more buildings, cars, roads, and people there is less space for
trees and plants which means no air cleaning mechanism to counteract the
vicious cycle modern cities are submerged in.
This way
of living has created a phenomenon known as ‘urban heat island effect’ in which
cities are up to 6 degrees Celsius hotter than their surrounding rural areas. This
heat comes form cars and air conditioning systems in a great part. These
machines produce gases that come in very high temperatures, ironically one of
them is used to cool down closed spaces thus creating a cycle with high
temperatures and more use of the air conditioning to cool down the heat. With
the introduction of electric vehicles, this can be brought to a halt. Professor
Canbing Li from the Hunan University found that electric vehicles emit 19.8% of
the total heat emitted by combustion vehicles per mile. This reduction would
lead to a
mitigation in the summer heat island intensity by about 0.94°C, reduced the
amount of electricity consumed daily by air conditioners in buildings by 14.44
million kilowatt-hours, and reduced daily CO2 emissions by 10,686 tonnes.
It's a fact that we need cars because of the great
distances in the cities. If we start using electric vehicles the vicious cycle
previously exposed could be stopped momentarily. With a reduction of the
temperature in cities, people may find it more pleasant to walk and use
bicycles in the cities promoting perhaps more green spaces, which can be a
final solution to such a problem.
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