Cars are pricey enough, but they take another toll.
Smog from road transport drains $0.8 trillion yearly from a group of 34
wealthy nations. A report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that air pollution costs OECD countries $1.7 trillion a year in healthcare and premature deaths. Road transport accounts for half of this.
Estimating the costs of environmental problems is a good way to get governments to take action, says Darby Jack
of Columbia University in New York. "That's the language they speak,"
he says. "When it's done right it can really make an impact."
The most harmful emissions come from
diesel engines, so the OECD wants governments to remove incentives to
buy them. The organisation also suggests expanding urban bicycle sharing
and electric car programmes, and introducing more charges for the use
of roads.
Air pollution also costs $1.4 trillion in
China and $0.5 trillion in India. Both have seen deaths due to smog
rising faster than the global average. Many nations are trying to cut smog,
for instance, by making cars more efficient, but any gains have been
overwhelmed by the rising number of cars in fast-expanding cities in
China and India.
The data collected by recent studies are really worring, now air pollution especially in big cities in the world has reached unthinkable levels , which seriously affect the public health and and healthcare costs. Now governments have realized that this catastrophic situation can only be addressed through the introduction of programs that support the spread of electric mobility such as: subsidies for the purchase of electric vehicles, the ability to move freely in traffic limited areas and in the days when the traffic is blocked for these types of means, etc. ..
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