Transportation and Climate Change

Abstract

Transportation for personal mobility and freight is a key component of economic and social well- being for Maine as well as the rest of the world. Transportation activity is also responsible for many pressing problems, including accidents and fatalities, degradation of local and regional air quality, land use change, congestion, oil dependency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. There are two ways of thinking about transportation and climate change: how the current and future transportation systems affect the climate system and how climate change is likely to affect the various modes of our transportation system. These dual impacts call for activities both to mitigate emissions and to adapt our transportation system to the changing climate. The mitigation of GHG emis- sions can provide synergies and produce co-benefits with non-climate transportation impacts including air quality, congestion and oil dependency (Kahn Ribeiro et al. 2007)