Persuasive Essay On Air Pollution

{intro} The United States of America is the leading contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions from aviation, with aircraft being the third largest source of emissions in its transportation sector (Harder and Ostrower). When the topic of emissions and travel comes up, a considerable number of people default to looking only at vehicles for ground travel such as cars, trucks, and trains, but aircraft are also large contributors to the growing issues of air pollution and the exhaustion of non-renewable energy sources. While the topics of climate change and the mass destruction of the environment for personal gain are still being debated, the consequences of this nation’s extensive dependence on fossil fuels and other toxic energy sources are

Department of Energy, vehicles that run on gasoline emit the equivalent of 11,435 pounds of carbon dioxide per year on average nationwide. For all-electric vehicles, this average drops to about 4,815 pounds of carbon dioxide per car, per year (Emissions). Based on these statistics, there are definitely measurable benefits that come from using cleaner energy sources for travel. Cars that run solely on electricity produce less than half the amount of emissions that vehicles that run on solely on gasoline do. While the use of only electric cars is not necessarily the best possible solution to the problem of inefficient travel methods on a widespread level, they do provide a good example of clean technology that has already been created and somewhat implemented into daily use. If these types of vehicles where used by the majority of the population, it is easy to see that amount of damage done to the environment by greenhouse gas emission would drastically decrease. Moreover, the type of technology used in electric cars could be expanded to use in aircraft as well to create hybrid aircraft that use electricity along with fuel as a power source, therefore decreasing the amount of fossil fuels they consume and the amount of carbon dioxide they release in emissions. Clearly, there is much room for improvement in the efficiency of vehicles and aircraft, but there needs to be a larger initiative to take action on this issue if we are to protect the