We're going to lose the global warming battle if we don't reduce personal cars in transportation. (And no, EVs don't solve it, they still have way too big CO2 footprints)
the EPA[1] says 4.6 metric tons of co2 from an average car. There were[2] 1bn cars in service globally, as of 2010.
βIt has been estimated that just one of these container ships, the length of around six football pitches, can produce the same amount of pollution as 50 million cars."[3]
1bn/50m = 20 cargo ships equal the estimated world carbon footprint of automobiles.
There are 50,000 cargo ships globally. There's your problem, go nuclear or go home.
Road transport is growinv catastrophically in addition to dominating other transport in absolute terms
I have difficulty understanding how you can present a figure like 4.6 tons per car and argue that it's not a lot, especially as developign countries are headed dangerously toward widespread car ownership.
The "50000x" number about cargo ships isn't CO2 emissions, it's about other pollution due to cargo ships using bunker fuel.
Cargo ships looks like a diversion from lobbies. It should be relatively easy to solve (upgrading 50k motors is much easier than redesign transport on land to trains, subway and bus). The trick is to conflate nitrogen oxide emission with air pollution.
