In our recently published animated video about the hidden costs of gasoline, we reported that the environmental and health costs of pollution aren't included in the price we pay at the pump.
One study [PDF] puts the true cost of gasoline at up to $15 per gallon.
Here, we answer some questions that have cropped up online. Please add your questions in the comment section.
Check out the annotated script to see all the sources we used in reporting the video.
Frequently asked questions:
A gallon of gasoline weighs only about 6 pounds. How can one gallon of gas create 19 pounds of greenhouse gas pollution?
A chemical reaction occurs when fuel is vaporized, compressed by a piston and hit by a spark plug to combust. Even though the fuel is burning to move your car, not all of the chemicals in the gasoline are burned up.
These chemicals mix with the air (that is taken in by your car and mixed with the fuel, as well as the air in the atmosphere), go through your catalytic converter and out your tailpipe. Even with pollution controls, not all the chemicals are captured or cleaned up.
Then these chemicals go into the atmosphere and mix with other gases (nitrogen, oxygen, etc.) to form carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas pollution. Still other chemicals mix together to form the pollution we can actually see – smog.
Simply put: It's a chemical reaction. Think about what happens when yeast makes bread rise, or when baking soda makes vinegar fizzy, or the states of water. Liquid water, solid ice and gaseous steam have different densities and therefore different weights, even if you begin and end with the same amount of (hydrogen*2)+oxygen.
Why didn’t you include other costs, like the military cost of war? What about the cost of building and maintaining roads and bridges?
Even though the video didn't explore the many other costs of driving, the study that calculated the $15/gallon price point did include both these categories in part of its calculations.
The study included the military costs, both in terms of protecting oil shipments in the unstable Middle East and the cost of wars.
It also looked at several aspects of roads: pollution from runoff, pollution from deicing chemicals and sand, urban sprawl, congestion, loss of open space and other effects.
How can gas evaporate from my car if it isn’t running?
Even when your car is parked, if the outside temperature is hot enough, it can make gas evaporate from your engine and fuel tank. In fact, about 14 percent of pollution that creates smog comes from this type of evaporation. The U.S. Department of Transportation has more emissions information here.
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