Yes, cars are almost certainly bad for the environment when looked at from most perspectives. But we should look at these things in context and with meaningful questions that get at the deeper issues. For an example, let’s ask this, “Bad for whose environment?” In other words, are we really entirely sure which environment is all-important to us? Let me clarify that with some history that Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner covered in their book Super Freakonomics:

“The main mode of transportation produced a slew of the by-products that economists call negative externalities, including gridlock, high insurance costs, and far too many traffic fatalities. Crops that would have landed on a family’s dinner table were sometimes converted into fuel, driving up food prices and causing shortages. Then there were the air pollutants and toxic emissions endangering the environment as well as individuals’ health.”

They were not speaking of cars, as you might think, but of horses at the end of the nineteenth century. They go on to explain the dangers that were present, and the huge piles of disease-producing manure that lined the streets of all major cities. A resident of New York in 1900 was twice as likely to die from a horse or carriage accident than in an auto accident in modern-day New York. The five million of pounds of horse manure deposited on the streets daily in New York was a huge problem for public health officials.

In the end, not knowing what to do, officials of the cities did little (although it was such a serious problem that the governments of many countries met to try to find a solution). The eventual environmental savior that made cities livable again was the automobile. That’s right, cars were much friendlier to the human environment.

Cars are bad for the environment in part because there are so many now, and they pollute so much. They do pollute less than past models used to, though, and this suggests that we might be able to keep our cars and still have a cleaner environment with further technological advances. My own favorite solution is to let everyone pay the true costs of operating automobiles. Tax gasoline fully enough to cover the whole cost of roads (current taxes probably cover 30% of the costs). Don’t in any way subsidize or bail out car companies. Certainly stop giving tax dollars to oil companies. Require stricter emissions standards.

If we have to pay 40% more for cars and for gasoline to cover the true costs that are hidden in the system, so be it. We will then see solutions arise in the form of more public transportation, more walking, better cars and so on. Meanwhile those who want a car and are willing to pay the price can have one without it being a problem. After all, cars are not bad for the environment automatically–only when there are too many cars or too many of the wrong kinds do they become bad for the environment. In any case, until the other options emerge, it seems cars are better than horses.