Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon and Aaron Naparstek realized that no one was discussing the many cultural factors that have played a role in humanity’s car dependency, or the negative impacts this reliance on motor vehicles has on human health and the planet. So they started their own show to do exactly that, The War on Cars. Gordon joins Mongabay’s podcast to discuss just how human society got here — and how we might get ourselves out of it — which is also the subject of a new book he co-authored with Goodyear and Naparstek, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile. “We felt that nobody was really covering the car as this overwhelming determinative force in the life of you as an individual, the life of society and nature, politics, culture, everything,” he says. The lobbying efforts of the auto industry greatly contributed car dependency today, which has human health effects ranging from loneliness to respiratory illnesses and even Alzheimer’s disease. These are health impacts that Gordon says will not be solved by a switch to electric vehicles, as toxic particulate matter from tires is produced faster by EVs due to their greater weight. Beyond the physical and medical problems they pose for humans, cars are deadlier for wildlife: nearly a million animals are killed on roads every day, just in the U.S., which is a reality we previously discussed on the podcast with journalist Ben Goldfarb. But noise pollution from roadways also impacts anyone within…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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