Impacts

There are social effects on families and lifestyles from all these new developments; stress levels due to long commutes and delays, impacts on adult’s and children's health, asthma, rising obesity levels, cardiovascular diseases, not to mention fatalities and injuries in car accidents.

There's the destruction of habitats from road building, rising animal deaths on the roads, effects on water levels, air pollution and ecological destruction.

Then there's climate change. From the historic floods in New Orleans last year, to the thousands dead across Europe in the 2003 summer heat wave, climate change is already here. It's up to all of us to make sure it doesn't get worse.

Cars are the fastest growing contributors of greenhouse gases (GHG) worldwide. Ireland has the fifth highest level of GHG emissions (e.g. CO 2 ) per capita in the world. At the end of 2003, we had already exceeded our emissions quota under the Kyoto Protocol by 16%.1