Be a Trendsetter!
View(s):Just a few weeks back we learnt about the carbon footprint, and how much carbon dioxide (CO2) you emit. Today, let’s discuss an activity that emits a lot of carbon dioxide, and the ways we can curb it. You know very well that fossil fuel burned in transport emits vast amounts of CO2. So the more transport we use, the more CO2 we emit.
The three-piece circular graph given, is called a pie chart. It says that, out of our total energy usage in Sri Lanka, which is 372,000,000,000,000,000 Joules
(372 Peta Joules), 29 percent comes from the transport sector. Do not worry about the unit right now, but in simpler terms, if we divide our energy consumption into 100 equal pieces, the transport sector is responsible for 29 pieces of it, which is considerable.
Who contributes most?
According to your observations, which vehicles do you think dominate the road?
Look at the bar chart given. This chart was plotted using the active vehicle fleet, which is made up of vehicles that actually ply the road.
If you draw a sample of 100 vehicles plying the road at present, approximately 51 of them will be motor bikes, while 22 will be three-wheelers and a single bus!
This is indeed not a healthy feature. In fact, in developed countries, especially in the countries of the European Union, most commuters use cycles (push bicycles) and public transport (buses, trams, trains etc). People seldom travel in private cars, because private transport is prohibitively expensive there.
Three-wheelers, motor bikes, without counting those monster bikers
(hells angels etc.,) are virtually
non-existent in developed countries.
How do we contribute?
Assume that ten kids go to school in ten cars. So if a single car consumes
‘x’ amount of diesel and emits ‘y’ amount of carbon dioxide, then ten cars will consume ‘10x’ litres of diesel and emit ‘10y’ kilo grams of carbon dioxide, just to drop those ten kids to school. Now what if all these kids were transported in a school bus? Apart from the differences in the engines, the bus would effectively consume lesser than ‘10x’ of diesel litres and emit much lesser than ‘10y’ kg of carbon dioxide, to drop ten kids to school.
Trendsetter
This is why public transport matters. As shown in the pie chart, the energy consumption of the transport sector in our country is high because we use a lot of private transport modes likes cars, motor bikes, three wheelers, but less buses and trains. About 30 years ago, school buses were more frequent than school vans, but today, it’s vice-versa.
Maybe we should follow the example of developed countries and learn to use less private transport. Discuss it with your parents and friends and try to do something new. Be a trendsetter.
Good luck!
Sri Lanka Sustainable Energy Authority
carbon@energy.gov.lk