Help clear the air: go car-free for a day
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Staff Writer
Ever wonder what would happen if every registered vehicle in Hawai'i hit the road at once? The good news is that they'd fit.
The bad, of course, is that nobody would get very far.
Some folks in the environmental community are trying to do the opposite in celebration of this year's Earth Day.
The Commons, a Paris group, and Seattle's Earth Day Network are promoting Earth Car-Free Day. Earth Day, April 22, falls on a Sunday this year, so they're calling on people to leave their cars at home the preceding Thursday, April 19.
Get the old bike out of the garage and bolt on the wheels. It's that, the bus or hoofing it to work.
That's if you choose to participate. Some groups are already urging people to reject the effort, saying, for example, that more roads are the solution, not fewer cars.
Organizers say their target is not so much traffic congestion but air pollution. They see Earth Car-Free Day as a way to allow individual citizens to make a statement about global warming, since governments have been unable to meet the goals of the Kyoto Protocol, the international global warming treaty whose provisions the Bush Administration has refused to adopt.
Automobiles are among the major contributors to the increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
How prevalent are automobiles in the Islands? Well, there are nearly as many registered cars and trucks in Hawai'i as there are residents 18 and older — about 900,000.
There are just about 4,200 miles of paved roads. Some have only one lane and some have four or more, but the average is probably about two.
So, if you put all 900,000 vehicles on all 8,400 miles of driving lanes, you end up with about 107 cars per mile.
That works out to roughly 50 feet of road per car.
The Earth Car-Free Day effort suggests people wean themselves of their automotive addiction.
Leaving the keys on the kitchen table isn't the only goal of this year's Earth Day; energy is a big part of the campaign.
Earth Day organizers are supporting energy efficiency and clean energy such as wind and solar power. They also are challenging alleged human rights abuses by oil companies worldwide.
For more information on Earth Day, check out the Web site.
For more on Earth Car-Free Day, see the Web site.
Jan TenBruggencate is The Advertiser's Kaua'i bureau chief and its science and environment writer. You can reach him at (808) 245-3074 or e-mail jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.
