Transportation's Impact on Our World

Transportation's Impact on Our World

Methods of transportation have always occupied a certain niche in society. Beyond their obvious practical use, transports from horses to speed boats to sports cars embody the romance and intrigue of travel. However, beyond the obvious effect low fuel-efficiency standards have had on pollution in the United States and elsewhere, the environmental impacts of transportation are rarely taken into account. Advances in transportation have had two main effects on the environment. Technological advances in transportation are some of the direct reasons behind particulate emissions, global warming and other pollution problems of the industrial age. In addition, transportation has neutralized barriers to diffusion across the world, ensuring the spread of innovation, technology and disease around the world.

As transportation has become more mechanized, and as we have increased our use of fossil fuels to support that mechanization, its effects on the environment have become clear. As Al Gore clearly stated, he believes that the internal combustion engine was the worst invention humans ever made. From an environmental standpoint, he has something of a point, albeit a rather misguided one. As of yet advances of transportation have had the side effect of large amounts of pollution. I say side effects not to degrade the seriousness of the pollution that we spew out daily, but simply because I doubt very seriously whether engineers planned or were in any way aware of the possible implications their inventions would have. However that does not mitigate the damage their creations have caused. Shipbuilding in the middle ages led to the deforestation of massive amounts of Europe, Britain, and parts of the U...

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...uest to South America. His advantage in ships shaped the future of Latin America.

Global transportation opens the door to more than technology. The diffusion of disease has also depended on the advantages transportation provides. As Europeans expanded beyond their cold dreary continent, they unfortunately brought their disease with them. Smallpox, measles, influenza, typhus, and the bubonic plague were all introduced from Europe to the Americas, leading to massive deaths in the native population. Even today, as the threat of Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) spreads rapidly from Hong Kong, it is clear that transportation has more effects beyond merely moving from place to place. Considering the effects it has had in the past and continues to have today, its importance and the emphasis we place on its efficiency and pollution can have global consequences.