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Green 4

The document discusses how transportation impacts energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. It notes that reducing car trips, such as driving to parks alone, can help lower emissions. Ordering items online instead of driving to stores may also be more efficient for distribution. Sustainable development aims to consider social, economic, and environmental factors together, unlike traditional development which focuses only on economic aspects. Urban centers can be environmentally friendly places to live due to lower transportation and infrastructure costs as well as heat recapture between buildings.

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40 views2 pages

Green 4

The document discusses how transportation impacts energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. It notes that reducing car trips, such as driving to parks alone, can help lower emissions. Ordering items online instead of driving to stores may also be more efficient for distribution. Sustainable development aims to consider social, economic, and environmental factors together, unlike traditional development which focuses only on economic aspects. Urban centers can be environmentally friendly places to live due to lower transportation and infrastructure costs as well as heat recapture between buildings.

Uploaded by

costi.sorescu
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Transportation

others, found a connection between my experiences in


nature and this idea of an environment that should be
protected. However, living in, playing in, and even
seeing places where nature abounds, in the forest and
the periphery of urban centers, can have particularly
large impacts on our transportation-related energy
consumption.
If the scientists are right, reducing the amount of
carbon that we emit into the atmosphere should be the
top priority for modern societies. If we do not manage
to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in our
atmosphere soon, we may one day face the prospect of
runaway climate change. Scientists speculate that when
a certain concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is
reached, the rising heat of the planet will lead to more
heat-trapping gases being released from natural
sources. This creates a sort of feedback loop in the
climate that kicks in after a certain tipping point.
Such a feedback loop would decimate most of the
life on the planet, along with the majority of us. So,
while I enjoy the forests and the parks, I think twice
about going to drive there, alone in my car, for the
weekend. That is certainly part of being smart about
transportation and a start on the road to becoming
“green.”
Anyone today could have ordered the book online
and had it delivered, potentially saving a trip for you,
but also possibly helping to create a more efficient
distribution system. Retail stores aren’t always the
most efficient way of keeping a large warehouse of
products in terms of energy consumption. Often,
retail stores need to be located near to customers,
with good transportation access, while warehouses
can be located in more inconvenient locations.
Sending goods directly from warehouses in regular
shipments can at times be more efficient than sending
goods to a store first to be collected. But that would
have meant your knowing about it, or finding it
before hand, rather than just stumbling across it on
the shelves. I think this is an example of the social
side to sustainability, which is the foundation of this
whole “green” thing. Sustainable development
proposes that we should give equal consideration to
social, economic, and environmental aspects of
everything (Figure 2-3). It tries to stand in contrast
to everyday development, which is often concerned
solely with the economic aspects and tends to
miss the others.
Figure 2-3 The concept of sustainable development.
Figure 2-2 Stuck in traffic? Think about whether you
really needed to make the trip. Reducing our car travel
is more important than improving the emissions of
individual vehicles in order to reduce scenes like this.
Tip
You don’t have to hug a tree to be green: urban
centers may not get all the credit they deserve for
being environmentally friendly places to live.
Benefits include lower transportation emissions, as
well as lower infrastructure and service costs, and
lower heating costs because heat radiates between
buildings and apartments.
Environment
Society Economy
The
sustainability
triangle

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