Buckle up your seatbelts and get ready to go contribute to the 1,142 million metric tons of gasoline carbon emissions per year.

The carbon emissions caused by cars has gone too far. It has ruined our earth’s atmosphere and will continue to do so if nothing is done about it.

According to eia.gov, in the 1920s, 9 million vehicles powered by gasoline were on the road. Worldometers states, since then it has grown into an estimated 1 billion passenger cars that are in use today. Each of these passengers are pouring about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year into the environment according to the U.S. energy information administration. This effectively makes a thermal blanket for our earth’s atmosphere. This thermal blanket contributes to what we know as global warming.

Physics teacher Mr. Gerstman said, “You have to have some water in the air; too much water in the air traps sunlight.  Too much heat, global warming.” 

Climate change is a little different than what we might expect with all the interpretations made by uncredible media. According to Science H.S.W., the change is the difference in a constant climate has, like a change in its average temperature.

Biology teacher Susan Groff said, “We’ve seen extremely hot summers, cold winters, and even drought.”

But the change doesn’t have to be substantial and anomalies like winter being hotter or colder for just a year does not apply to the average weather of a climate.

“There has been no other time in history that it has gone up this rapidly. There has been slow growth and slow growth in temperature, but this has gone up exponentially,” said Groff.

With that in mind, our dependence on gas negatively affects the climate. But if we know it does, why don’t we do anything about it? 

Gerstman gives us an idea of why we still use it despite its negative impact on our environment.

“Burning gas is really not a good idea, but without it, our society would fall on its knees really quickly because you have to have trucks to carry goods from farm countries to Los Angeles.”

So why not just use electric trucks? Well according to InsideEvs, a publication about electric vehicles, the average electric truck could go up to 500 hours as opposed to the 1500 miles to 2400 miles a gasoline fuel truck can go on one tank. Added up with the several hours it would take to charge the vehicle, the electric truck would result in longer transportation of products and does not compare to a gas-powered truck. 

Our reliance on gas with the way we’ve built our economy has caused us to be in a position to have to use it in some way, but our misuse of it on things we don’t need, like driving that one mile we’re too lazy to walk, has in return hurt the planet we live on.

But electric vehicles are promising, with the improvements that are being made on then constantly, the possibility of electric going further than gas is foreseeable.