Every day people wake up, get ready, and go to work or school. The way they get there can vary but for the most part, people drive cars. That's about to change. Helping the enviroment and becoming more relaxed are advanatages for limiting car usage.

By reducing car usage, emmitions produced from automobiles can be reduced and help the enviroment. When cars reslease gas into the air, it causes smog which traps the gases and inhibits them from being able to escape the atomosphere. In largely congested cities smog can be as harmful as 147 micrograms of particulate matter as seen in Paris, France (paragraph 17). Paris enfored a partial driving ban due the amount of smog and just after one day of reduced driving, the smog clears enough so they didn't have to enforce the ban another day (paragraph 19). Passenger cars are resonsible for 12 percent of greeenhouse gas emissions in Europe and up to 50 percent in the United States. (paragraph 5). This staggering statistic can open your eyes to how much cars really effect the envrioment. If just once a week you didn't use your car, you could reduce greenhouse gases drastically. In the United States today, recent studies have shown that Americans are buying fewer cars, and are driving less. (paragraph 29). Since 1995, the number of miles driven per person dropped almost 9 percent (paragraph 32). With lesser people buying and driving new cars, gas emissions could change drastically within a few years and could help our evrioment exonentialy.

When you do not drive a car to from places every day, you become a more relaxed person. In Vauban, Germany- residents have given up cars almost all together, only 30 percent of residents owning cars. In this Suburban town, it seems comman for mothers to own a minivan to ship children back and forth all throughout town; Heidrun Walter feels other wise. She has given up her automobile to get around town and "When I had a car I was always tense. I'm much happier this way." Walter states. (paragraph 3). For the past three years in Bogota, Colombia they take a day out of the year where only taxis and buses are permitted, the Day Without Cars. Even when dark clouds circled around the city and rain splattered down onto the heads of people, they didn't revert back to their cars. A businessman Carlos Arturo Plaza states that "It's a good opportunity to take away stress and lower air pollution." (paragraph 24). This day has become so popular, two other cities in Columbia joined in as well the celebrate the day where people do not use their cars. People do not need to meet with other people in order to go to work or hangout with friends anymore; they can be in their own homes using the technology they access see their friends and continue to do their work.(paragraph 35). Without having to commute to an office, people feel less stressed and more relaxed being able to do their work in the comfort of their own home.

People used to accossicate cars as the best way to get from place A to B without thinking about the consequences it can have on the planet or on yourself. You have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. What can you do to help change the world?

WOW WHAT A FUCKING WASTE OF MY TIME!!!