When people decide to use active travel, they are making the choice to not use a vehicle for whatever journey they’re about to take. Most vehicles release gases that harm the environment, and so the more people that use physical modes of travel the less pollutants we’ll have being released into the environment.

 

Currently around 21% of UK greenhouse gas emissions comes from transport and it is predicted the proportion of traffic in congested areas will more than double by 2035 [1], which obviously means if we wish to keep things under control before then things need to be changed.

 

Specifically, however cars produce CO2, this greenhouse gas contributes to climate change and in turn causes dangerous problems in the world we live in, such as more droughts, heatwaves and floods. If cars make more journeys in total, then more CO2 is released into our atmosphere and the quicker these problems start to develop, leading to our planet being much worse off that it naturally should have been.

 

A relevant note is that in the government’s Carbon Plan (December 2011), transport is identified as one of the major areas that needs to be considered when trying to meet the greenhouse gas emission limits set for the UK [2]. This is proof that our travel choices indeed do have a significant impact on the environment around us and by making active choices we can work to prevent problems that we really don’t need in the first place.

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[1] Brake, 2014. Sustainable and Active Travel. [Online]
Available at: http://www.brake.org.uk/events/15-facts-a-resources/facts/1282-sustainable-and-active-travel
[Accessed 11 June 2017].

[2] Vehicle Certification Agency, 2017. Cars and Carbon Dioxide. [Online]
Available at: http://www.dft.gov.uk/vca/fcb/cars-and-carbon-dioxide.asp
[Accessed 11 June 2017].

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