Natural Humanists believe that, in most cases, the ownership and use of cars is anti-social, harmful and immoral, and that public transport or electric bikes should be used whenever transport is required.
They recognise that, according to Delft University, driving a car is responsible for road accidents, road congestion, air pollution, soil pollution, water pollution, climate change, damage to nature and landscapes, and dependence on other countries for energy[i].
Cars also contribute significantly to micro-plastic pollution, increase ozone depletion, and can cause noise pollution[ii], which, when people are frequently exposed to it, can lead to hearing problems, headaches, and stress.
Manufacturing cars leaves a huge carbon footprint, because of the materials used to create them, like steel, rubber, glass, plastics and paints, and, at the end of the car’s life, plastics, toxic battery acids, and other products, may remain in the environment, with about 1/4 of the average car not being recyclable at all[iii].
In addition to this, 80 to 90% of a car’s environmental impact is caused by its fuel, and the greenhouse gases and air pollution caused by its emissions, every time it’s driven[iv]. Extracting petrol and diesel from the Earth is also energy-intensive, and can damage local ecosystems, and transporting these fuels also uses a lot of energy[v].
Cars are responsible for harmful gases like carbon monoxide, ozone, carbon dioxide, benzene, and particulate matter, which can damage living organisms and the environment[vi].
Risk of Death
Vehicles cause about 1/3 of all air pollution in countries like the USA[vii] and, because most of these exhaust emissions occur at ground level, where humans live, not high up in the air, and are mainly in residential areas, where adults and children breathe them in, they cause or exacerbate health conditions[viii] and, in some cases, are specifically named on a death certificate as a ‘cause of death’, in some countries, like the UK.
Emissions from cars can cause, or increase, respiratory problems and disabilities, which affect large numbers of adults and children, particularly in the urban and sub-urban areas where most human beings on Earth now live, and this contributes to the needless death of numerous children and adults each year[ix].
Motor vehicle collisions are also believed to have caused the death of an incredible 60 million people during the 20th century[x], and in just one year (2010), 1.23 million children and adults were killed due to traffic collisions[xi].
In the USA, motor vehicle accidents cause 37.5% of all accidental deaths, and crashes are the leading cause of death in children and young people aged 5 to 34, killing 18,266 Americans every year. Natural Humanists believe that the life of every single one of these children and adults matters, and that choosing to effectively drive a lethal weapon, when public transport is available, is immoral.
According to Eurostat, cars cause 10½ times more human deaths than buses, and over 29 times more human deaths than trains[xii]and that’s not even taking into account the millions of birds, insects, cats, dogs, deer, and other animals killed every year, due to collisions with cars.
The more cars people buy, the more roads, garages and car-parks have to be built, or widened, to accommodate them, and the more potentially biodiverse land has to be converted into ‘out-of-town’ shopping and leisure facilities, each with their own huge car-park, to service them, which often effectively exclude people without cars, because they can’t easily access them, potentially adding to their social isolation, and meaning that they can only use smaller and more expensive local shops for food and other essentials. These developments also damage the countryside with their construction, deny wildlife a home on the land on which they’re built, and further add to pollution and carbon levels.
Cars, and the roads that they require, also create barriers, both for humans, and for all other species, reducing our natural right and freedom to roam without obstruction.
Traffic congestion leads to people having to waste their lives, spending hours each week, often alone, in traffic-jams, but it’s common for only the driver to be in many cars, without any passengers at all, and so, potentially, each electric double decker bus can replace 90 cars, totally eliminating congestion, reducing travelling time, and hugely decreasing pollution, and the unnecessary death of living things.
Growth of Car Use
In 1909, there were just 53,000 cars licensed in Great Britain, but this had rocketed to 22.2 million cars in 1996 and, worryingly, then went on to increase by another 29% in just 15 years to 28.6 million in 2011[xiii] and, today, there are now around 1,470 million vehicles worldwide[xiv].
In the 1950s and 1960s, buses were one of the main forms of transport in the UK, but, in Great Britain, the total number of miles travelled by bus or coach each year, halved between 1960 and 2018 [xv], and in 2018, only 4% of vehicle miles travelled were by bus or coach[xvi], and, by 2023, less than 9% of travel in Great Britain was by train[xvii].
Carbon Footprint
The carbon footprint left by everything, including different modes of transport, is measured in ‘grams of carbon dioxide equivalents’ (g CO2e). For example travelling on a rural double-decker bus, if you’re the only passenger, produces 2500g per mile[xviii], compared to 530g per mile in an average UK car[xix], 180g per mile in a mid-sized 5-door electric car[xx], 160g on an intercity train in first class[xxi], 72g per mile on a train in standard class[xxii], 46g on a half-full London Routemaster diesel hybrid bus[xxiii], but only 6g on a full 90-seater electric bus in the UK[xxiv].
When it comes to cycling, the carbon footprint depends on which type of food we eat to provide us with the energy (calories) to pedal the bike, just like it does when we choose to walk instead, so cycling 1 mile has a carbon footprint of 310g if it’s ‘fuelled’ by cheeseburgers, but only 40g if it’s powered by bananas[xxv], whereas travelling 1 mile by electric bike (at 12 mph with no hills or stops) has a carbon footprint of just 3g (or 13g to 103g if you include a fair share of the bike’s ‘embodied carbon’ [xxvi], which is the carbon created by all stages of its creation). So, the less embodied carbon there is in a particular model of electric bike, and the more we, or other people, use it for preferably essential journeys during its lifespan, the lower its total carbon footprint per mile will be.
This means that using electric buses, even if they’re only half-full, has the lowest carbon footprint of all, even lower than a manual or electric bike, and possibly even lower than walking, but it’s essential that we collectively ensure that these buses are run in such a way, that they’re always as full as possible, to minimise traffic congestion, and also to minimise our collective carbon footprint, as well as to reduce air and noise pollution, microplastic pollution from brakes and tyres, and the death of children, adults, birds, insects and other animals that are killed due to occasional, but inevitable, collisions with vehicles each year, which only occur at all due to our choice to use vehicles.
Natural Humanists don’t focus on never, accidentally, killing insects and other living things, to the same degree that followers of the religion Jainism do, but they do try to organise their lives in ways that minimise their need to travel at all and, therefore reduce the likelihood that they’ll contribute to others’ deaths.
Wherever possible, Natural Humanists use the greenest form of transport, which, in some cases, due to low demand for buses, which prevent them from travelling full, is the use of long-lasting, low embodied carbon electric bikes, although this is a delicate balance, as a half empty bus and an electric bike following the same route, makes no sense at all, and actually adds to total carbon levels in the environment, so all such decisions should involve ‘joined-up’ thinking.
Anti-Social Behaviour
Before cars became commonplace in our communities, people used public transport, which resulted in people sharing buses, and waiting together at bus-stops with other people, whom they’d chat to, get to know, care about, and feel part of a community with.
Today however, in many ‘advanced’ countries, the use of cars results in people living their lives, sometimes without ever meeting members of their local community, contributing significantly to the growing ‘pandemic’ of loneliness, and the mental health problems that it causes. Consequently, Natural Humanists consider private transport, including cars, to be a selfish life choice, which denies other people meaningful human connection.
The increasing use of cars has also directly resulted in the reduction or cancellation of many public transport services, because of reduced demand, which has socially-isolated some people, including older people, families with children, and those on low incomes.
Many rural areas now have no bus services at all, or only one bus per week, severely restricting the ability of people from rural areas to access employment, leisure facilities and shops, and their ability to visit friends and family, as well as preventing many people in urban areas from getting to natural rural environments, effectively resulting in them living their lives in a human-built urban ‘prison’. Reduced demand for public transport has also resulted in bus-fares increasing to reflect this reduced demand, again restricting many people’s ability to travel and adding to their social-isolation.
Wasting Land
Cars use large quantities of natural resources for their construction, fuelling, and maintenance, but they also take up huge amounts of the planet’s land, which could otherwise be returned to being the natural wild biodiverse land that it was for billions of years of the planet’s history, land which could support thousands of species of living things.
This potentially biodiverse land is needed for the wider multi-carriageway roads that each of these private cars require, and also for all of the petrol stations and recharging stations, and all of the residential roads, driveways and garages at every home, given that many local councils do not allow new homes to be built without these land-wasting parking facilities.
Potentially biodiverse land is also needed for all of the billions of car parks, at virtually every office, shop, school, factory, train station, cinema, pub, restaurant, and other public or commercial building and facility, most of which aren’t used at all for a significant proportion of the time, including at night, and at weekends too with schools and most workplaces, not to mention during the 12 weeks or more of school and college holidays.
An example of this is the USA, which has an estimated 2,000 million parking places, which take up around 26,800 km2 of potentially wild biodiverse land [xxvii].
Integrated Public Transport System
Natural Humanists believe that all transport, of both passengers and freight, should always be by the smallest, least-polluting, lowest-carbon vehicles possible, which should all be communally-owned and maintained, and as long-lasting and repairable as possible.
They also believe that this transport should cause as little harm as possible to the planet, in terms of land-use, pollution and the use of natural resources required for their production, usage and maintenance, and as little damage as possible to both humans and other animals, such as the human respiratory illnesses which are due to pollution from petrol and diesel vehicles, and the death of billions of insects, animals, adults and children each year, which are due to collisions with these vehicles.
An example of how the environmental damage caused by public transport could be minimised, is by using self-driving buses, operated only by Artificial Intelligence and Global Positioning Satellites (GPS), which do not follow the entire route from A to B.
Instead, each main road could have its own public transport, which only travels along that one road, only when a demand exists, with green-roofed bus-shelters located where main roads meet, to allow transfer from one bus to another during each journey, and to avoid numerous half-empty buses having to travel along the same road at a similar time, which have each come from, and are each travelling to, different places.
These buses could all be perfectly organised and coordinated locally and nationally by Artificial Intelligence, to ensure they provide a truly demand-led service, with little or no duplication, and no services running at all when none are needed, all timed and managed by Artificial Intelligence to minimise total journey time for each passenger, while also minimising the total overall miles travelled by all vehicles in any one day.
This automated and integrated system could minimise the number and size of vehicles used to meet demand at any particular time of day, including automatically switching between using double-decker or single-decker buses, mini-buses, or electric self-driving cars, whenever these are the smallest and least polluting vehicles that can meet demand at that particular moment in time.
If demand was particularly low or high at any particular time of day, Artificial Intelligence could automatically switch between a bus travelling just along one particular road, to that same bus covering a totally different road temporarily, or providing a direct service along an entire route, which involved travelling along numerous roads, or even automatically travelling to another nearby town to meet spikes in demand that occur there, whenever this was necessary and environmentally responsible.
Some journeys, for some people, are essential, and have to occur at certain times of the day or week, whereas some journeys are optional and can happen on any day, at any time, or needn’t happen at all. Artificial Intelligence could manage all of these journeys in a way which always uses the least number of vehicles and the smallest and least-polluting vehicles in the most efficient way possible at any one time.
Most journeys could be booked in advance, using an internet site or phone app., but some journeys would need to be booked, cancelled or re-timed at short-notice, for example, if a businessperson’s meeting overran.
If any of these last-minute changes resulted in the need for the previously planned vehicle to be changed at the last minute for a larger and more polluting vehicle, then Artificial Intelligence could immediately contact everybody who had booked to use that vehicle, and who had indicated in advance that their need to travel at that time was not essential, to ask if they would be happy to reprogramme their journey for another time. If they agreed to do this, then a smaller vehicle could be used, ensuring that, at all times, only the greenest vehicles were being used to meet actual demand.
If any booked vehicle had so few passengers booked on to it that it was hardly worth going ahead with that journey, then, again, Artificial Intelligence could automatically ask these passengers if they were happy to re-time their journey, or take a different, possibly longer route, using services with vacant seats. If they all were, then that vehicle’s journey could be cancelled, but if not, the smallest vehicle possible to meet the revised passenger numbers could be used.
Some people have no preference about when they travel, and they could be placed on a waiting list by Artificial Intelligence. Whenever a vehicle was expected to travel with some empty seats, those who had shown an interest in that journey, perhaps hours, days, weeks, or even months in advance, and who were on this waiting list, could be automatically asked if they wanted to book on to that particular vehicle for that journey, so that every vehicle was more likely to travel fully-loaded, thereby minimising the overall number of ‘vehicle journeys’ carried out over the course of any day, week, month or year.
A demand-led system, using buses only travelling on one road each, would increase the availability of services being available to people in more isolated areas, because a bus wouldn’t need to travel the entire route from, say, a town centre to that isolated area, it would just need to travel from the nearest road or place which has a more frequent or convenient bus service to that destination, which might be different at different times of day, and on different days, and at different times of year. It would also eliminate the need for buses to take long detours through, for example, certain housing estates or small villages when, at that particular time, there was nobody wanting to travel to or from that location, in fact, it would allow most bus journeys to only take the most direct route from A to B, without ever taking any unnecessary detours off this route at all.
Artificial Intelligence would know about every single bus, mini-bus and communally-owned self-driving car in the country, or the world, and so, in theory, could book passengers on very long-distance journeys, using a long series of local buses, for example, Coventry to London or Newcastle to Madrid, all by a carefully-coordinated succession of buses, or self-driving cars, either to minimise the total time taken for the entire journey, or if time is not an issue, to minimise the additional carbon footprint that taking that total journey would cause (for example, if it required vehicle sizes to be increased to accommodate some parts of that booked journey), or to allow stop-offs and detours to take-in interesting places, or overnight stops on-route. If at any point, there was a delay which caused a change of bus to be missed, then Artificial Intelligence would constantly recalculate the journey, so it was always the most time and/or carbon-efficient journey possible.
Artificial Intelligence could also enable the use of scheduled coach or train services along any part of a passenger’s required route, if spaces were available. Trains are usually more polluting than electric buses, require the use of more natural resources in their construction than buses, because they’re over-engineered, and have a higher overall carbon footprint per mile than fully-loaded electric buses. The existence of trains also means that potentially wild biodiverse land has to be ‘stolen’ from other species to house rail lines, sidings, stations, etc., in addition to roads for buses, which follow a similar route, but if a train was already travelling along all, or part, of the route that somebody needed to use, and had empty seats, then it would be better to use a train for that part of the journey, if that meant an additional bus, or buses, didn’t have to duplicate all or part of that train’s route.
Natural Humanists believe that, eventually, all private and public transport, and all commercial and freight transport should gradually, and in the most environmentally-responsible way possible, be totally replaced by such a state-run, not-for-profit, low cost, accessible and fully coordinated public passenger and freight transport system, which always meets actual need as efficiently and effectively as possible, with as little environmental damage as possible, with as little damage to the health of human beings and other living creatures as possible, and with as little use of potentially wild biodiverse land as possible, for example, by replacing all roads and all rail lines with underground public transport, which uses only the greenest, most long-lasting and most reusable or recyclable materials in all aspects of its creation, all coordinated, ultra-efficiently, by Artificial Intelligence.
Natural Humanists believe that this system should be fully automatic, and fully self-driving, and fully self-maintaining, as soon as technology permits this to happen, and that it should all be coordinated by Artificial Intelligence, so that as few drivers and other human beings as possible are needed for its construction, maintenance and operation, allowing these people to spend their lives on more meaningful and worthwhile work, or other activities.
They believe that, whenever appropriate and environmentally responsible, vehicles should be able to adapt to carry both passengers and commercial freight. For example, using sealed trailers, automatically collected and dropped off at special points on-route by buses, or lorries or vans, already following that route, so that a bus, and a van or lorry, don’t have to duplicate any journey.
Coupling and uncoupling of such trailers could happen automatically, and again, the trailer’s entire journey, or the entire journey of individual items within a trailer, and the buses or lorries it uses to pull it along its routes, could automatically be managed ultra-efficiently by Artificial Intelligence, which would also minimise the risk that any trailer would return to its original location empty, if it could carry other items, or if it could go on to somewhere else entirely, rather than returning to its original location.
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References
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[ii] Wikipedia contributors. “Societal effects of cars.” 22 May 2025. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 2 Jun. 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_effects_of_cars
[iii] “The environmental impacts of cars, explained by National Geographic Staff”. 4 September 2019. nationalgeographic.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/environmental-impact
[iv] “The environmental impacts of cars, explained by National Geographic Staff”. 4 September 2019. nationalgeographic.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/environmental-impact
[v] “The environmental impacts of cars, explained by National Geographic Staff”. 4 September 2019. nationalgeographic.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/environmental-impact
[vi] Wikipedia contributors. “Societal effects of cars.” 22 May 2025. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 2 Jun. 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_effects_of_cars
[vii] “The environmental impacts of cars, explained by National Geographic Staff”. 4 September 2019. nationalgeographic.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/environmental-impact
[viii] “The environmental impacts of cars, explained by National Geographic Staff”. 4 September 2019. nationalgeographic.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/environmental-impact
[ix] Wikipedia contributors. “Societal effects of cars.” 22 May 2025. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 2 Jun. 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_effects_of_cars
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[xi] World Health Organization. “Number of road traffic deaths”. who.int. https://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/traffic_deaths_number/en/. Cited on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_effects_of_cars#cite_note-47
[xii] Wikipedia contributors. “Societal effects of cars.” 22 May 2025. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 2 Jun. 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_effects_of_cars
[xiii] RAC Foundation. “Number of cars in Britain at a record high”. 30 Dec 2011. racfoundation.org. 27 May 2025. https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/record-number-of-cars
[xiv] Stumpf, Rob. “Here’s About How Many Cars Are There in The World in 2023”. 17 Oct 2023. thedrive.com. 27 May 2025. https://www.thedrive.com/guides-and-gear/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world
[xv] statista.com. “Modal split of passenger transport in Great Britain from 2014 to 2023”. statista.com. 6 June 2025. https://www.statista.com/statistics/300705/overall-use-of-transport-for-all-trips-in-the-united-kingdom/
[xvi] Department of Transport. Accredited official statistics: “Annual bus statistics: year ending March 2024” (revised). Updated 27 March 2025. gov.uk. 6 June 2025. https://www.statista.com/statistics/300705/overall-use-of-transport-for-all-trips-in-the-united-kingdom/
[xvii] Department of Transport. Accredited official statistics: “Transport Statistics Great Britain: 2023 Domestic Travel”. 19 December 2024. gov.uk. 27 May 2025. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-statistics-great-britain-2024/transport-statistics-great-britain-2023-domestic-travel
[xviii] Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas? The carbon footprint of everything (Revised 2020 Edition). Profile Books, 2020. p.30
[xix] Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas? The carbon footprint of everything (Revised 2020 Edition). Profile Books, 2020., p.62
[xx] Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas? The carbon footprint of everything (Revised 2020 Edition). Profile Books, 2020. p.62
[xxi] Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas? The carbon footprint of everything (Revised 2020 Edition). Profile Books, 2020. p.33
[xxii] Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas? The carbon footprint of everything (Revised 2020 Edition). Profile Books, 2020. p.33
[xxiii] Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas? The carbon footprint of everything (Revised 2020 Edition). Profile Books, 2020. p.30
[xxiv] Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas? The carbon footprint of everything (Revised 2020 Edition). Profile Books, 2020. p.30
[xxv] Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas? The carbon footprint of everything (Revised 2020 Edition). Profile Books, 2020. p.32
[xxvi] Berners-Lee, Mike. How Bad Are Bananas? The carbon footprint of everything (Revised 2020 Edition). Profile Books, 2020. p.28
[xxvii] Schlesinger, Dr. William H. (President Emeritus, Biogeochemist). “Paving the Earth”. caryinstitute.org. 3 June 2025. https://www.caryinstitute.org/news-insights/blog-translational-ecology/paving-earth