Transportation-Specific Challenges for Climate Policy

This chapter describes how oil security and global climate change are two looming transportation policy challenges. While remarkable advances have been made in reducing emissions of tailpipe pollutants, which are known to cause adverse public health effects, much less progress has been made on reducing overall oil consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). The United States (U.S.) highway fuel consumption and almost all petroleum consumption have increased 62 percent between 1973 and 2005. Overall, the U.S. transportation sector accounts for 33 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emissions, with over half of that coming from cars and trucks and this chapter reviews the current and future policy changes required to reduce these pollutants.