Divorce Your Car!, by Katie Alvord, is a book about how cars are bad for people and the world. After detailing the history of the automobile, it talks about ways to avoid its use at a personal and national level. I was surprised at how bland the "recommendation" section was, but there were a few gems about unique metro systems and ways to go about biking.#

Katie writes about how building new roads does not ease road congestion and in fact, makes it worse.#

[I]ncreasing evidence shows this road-building won't solve congestion problems. As the popular analogies go, you don't fight obesity by loosening your belt, or cure nasal congestion by widening your nose. Various computer models, mathematical theorems, and studies indicate that if you build or widen roads, cars will come. It's such a common occurrence that transportation engineers have names for it like "latent demand" and "generated traffic." A 1998 Surface Transportation Policy Project analysis found that cities that had spent billions for new road capacity had the same congestion levels as those which had not. [pg. 42]

A very strange statistic about advertising is mentioned:#

It's estimated people in the western world see 3,000 to 16,000 ads and commercial images every day, or roughly three to 17 of them every waking minute. Close to a fifth of those relate to cars. U.S. car and car-product sellers are the number one advertisers on TV and in magazines, number two in newspapers. [pg. 45]

In a section about the pollutants that are in car exhaust is this great tidbit about NAFTA.#

Methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (MMT) is an octane-enhancing fuel additive manufactured by the Ethyl Corporation - the same company that brought us tetraethyl lead. While Ethyl claims that MMT (marketed as "HiTEC(R) 3000") is "environmentally beneficial" because it reduces NOx and CO emissions, others express hesitation. When eaten in trace quantities, manganese is an important nutrient. But when breather, manganese may cause nerve, brain, and lung damage, including Parkinson's-like symptoms, as well as impairing hand-eye coordination and slowing reaction time. Few studies have explored potential effects of low-level, long-term exposure - the kind we might all get with widespread use of MMT in gasoline - but there is evidence that exposure to airborne manganese may bring on hyperactive, aggressive, or criminal behavior. The U.S. EPA estimated that only a small percentage (.02 percent) of the U.S. gasoline supply contained MMT as of 1998, but refiners and suppliers aren't required to disclose which gasoline it's in. Canada permitted MMT use beginning in 1978; 20 years later, when the Canadian government attempted to ban the use of MMT due to health concerns, the Ethyl Corporation threatened to sue, calling this a violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Backed into a corner by the provisions of NAFTA, Canada caved in and rolled back the ban, paying Ethyl $20 million for lost revenues and court costs. The U.S. EPA also attempted an MMT ban, but was challenged in court by Ethyl and lost. Organizations like Physicians for Social Responsibility have continued to call for an MMT ban despite these court decisions. [pg. 68]