1、 Several years ago, a people said: Maybe cars are the worst invention of people. More and more people believe that today. As a matter of fact, we do not know what is happiness and what is we really want about cars. Today, millions of cars run on the earth, we must construct our cities for th
2、em, and we walk and follow them with heavy breath. What a shame! We nearly had thrown ourselves under wheels. We must meditate that, and meditate that. 1. Cars and our cities. Nowadays, we nearly could not live without cars. The number of cars increased quickly as increase of the number of popul
3、ation. According to the statistic, there are about 24 million mobile cars in China, and 1.2 million of them are home cars. Most of them are in cities, and the number increases by 5 million every year. Experts predicted there will be 60 million cars in China in 2010. Some people said: There only two
4、kinds of animals in cities, one is people, the other is car. The number of cars increased quickly. The city became a sea of cars. Cars share the world with us. In other words, snatch our live space. So more and more people in cities struggle to retake their live space. There are some contradictions
5、between cars and people in cities. I will show them to you. ① Cars and traffic. The result of cars increase is traffic stoppage, traffic stoppage slows the speed of economic development, and increases the cost of transportation. Consequently, the productivity decreases. The cities will lose their
6、status that had been heartlands and their economy will be broken. For example, the traffic stoppage could decrease the buses' efficiency. According to a surrey, if 500 buses in a city decelerated by 1kilometre/hour, it means that this city lost 150 buses' transport power. In other words, the gove
7、rnment must invest more than 150 buses in public traffic to recover the transport of the city. But if do that, the traffic will be much more harder. And if the cars' density increase to 1.5 times, the noise from cars could increase 3 DB. On this condition, the proceeds of cars in China had exceede
8、d RMB 1000 billion yuan. According to the surrey, 90% of roads of Beijing which city's population is 2 million is saturated. 99 big intersections in Beijing are in traffic stoppage every day. Roads are urgent, parking lots are urgent, only cars are not urgent, they are people's favorites. 10 years
9、ago, a sociologist Zheng Ye published his dissertation ‘Criticism of Cars Civilization’. He said: Cars did not accelerate traffic speed, but they polluted cities. The parking lots for them ate our parks, the expansion of road for them conquers our theatres, museums and grass. They broke the quiet of
10、 suburbs. ② Cars and environment. Most cars are in big cities, especially in China, so the contaminant in air of these cities is more than the cities in developed countries. Always the energy of cars is petrol Surrey shows that 74% of nitrogen and oxide in air is from cars in London 1990s. It cont
11、ains CO, CO2, NOx, HC, DM, SO2, and so on. The end gas from cars not only pollute air but also produce more chemical smog to shut our eyes. The HC and NO in the end gas react with each other and release ozone, formaldehyde and peroxide, which is the kingpin of chemical smog. The smog wrap edifices
12、 and people breath hardly. The oil which blazes partially in engines releases HC, it contains hydrocarbon, formaldehyde, and so on. It hurts people's eyes, larynges, and tracheas. Some kinds of compound above are poison and carcinogenic. CO2 is a kind of gas which could result in the moisture of t
13、he world increase. It is terrible for circumstances. So 55 countries had signed ‘The treaty of controlling the discharge of CO2’ in Tokyo 1997. CO is a kind of produce of engine. A few carbon atoms in the oil oxidize and become CO2 and CO. CO is mild and colorless, it can brook people's blood syste
14、m of people, and it is mortal the people whose heart is unhealthy. Excess CO can asphyxiate people, so someone had been killed by CO in the airtight garages or cars. Nitrogen and oxygen react with each other and release their compound. We call it NOx which is the cause of acid rain. Additionally,
15、the lead in oil is a terrorist to health of people. Europe is the birthplace of industrial revolution. The people here had suffered air pollution in 19th century, especially in 1952. Strong smog had wraped all the buildings of London and had stay here for 5 days. 3000-4000people were killed by the
16、smog. I will show some examples of smog disasters. 1873, 1150 people were killed by chemical smog in UK. 1909, 1000 people were killed by smog in Scotland. 1930, 63 people were killed in Meuse. 1948, 20 people were killed in the USA. 1950, 22 people were killed in Poza Rica. 1953, 170-260 peop
17、le killed in New York. 1954, because of smog, hundreds of factories and schools closed up in Los Angeles. 1956, 1000 people were killed in London. 1962, 750 people were killed in London. 1965, 80 people were killed in New York. In western countries, the smog disasters had happened many times. S
18、o many people think smog as evil as devil. In China most contaminant is from cars, too. The strength of NOx of air was 18.4% in every city which have a population of 1-2 million in China. It was 20.5% in the cities which have a population of 2 million. In these cities, more and more people's health
19、is threatened by the air pollution. Some of them love cars, and some of them have cars, but cars hurt them as a bunch of red roses with thorns. Not only the end gas could pollute air but also the process of production could pollute circumstances, the process of oil production could pollute circumst
20、ances. In other words, cars are a nightmare of circumstances. The surrey show that the number of people who caught pulmonary disease increased by 5% every year. Most of them are babies and old men. We produced cars, but cars endanger people's health. The convenience we reaped from the cars is less
21、 than we lost. ③ Cars and energy. Cars eat much oil every day as eat our money. Nowadays the price of petrol hurt the people who have cars heavily. Some people predicted petrol will be as expensive as milk. It sound a joke, but it will be a fact soon. In 2002, there were 20.7 million cars in China
22、 the output of oil of China is 160 million ton this year. China had to import 77 million ton oil to feed those cars. Cars eats 87% of all the oil of the world every year. There will be more cars in the future, and more and more oil will be consumed by cars. Only oil will be less and less in the wor
23、ld. Energy crisis will be the present which we give to our next generations. 2. Cars and vanity of people. The multiplication of cars' number and styles is the root of expansion of people's vanity. MERCEDES-BENZ, MINI, PORSCHE, HUMMER, KIA, NISSAN, MASERATI, FERRARI, LAMBORGHINI, BENTLEY, AUDI
24、 BMW, GM, TOYOTA, HONDA, FORD, MAYBACH, SPYKER, SAAB, ROVER, RENAULT, MITSUBISHI, LINCOLN and JAGUAR, all the Brands express different status of people who is sitting in the car. Cars become identifications and wealth tallies. In some big cities, many youngsters who go somewhere by bus always feel
25、shame, because they feel they are empty-handed when they stand on the bus station platform. Consequently, more and more people are up to spend their lifetime in saving money to buy cars. Cars are conveyances, but more and more people look them as symbols which indicate wealth and status of people.
26、All the advertisements express that their cars do that above for people. They encourage people to do something to intensify traffic stoppage. Your car can tell you what is your status. Today, cars had become a luxury, as if they are gazing us every minute and every second. If a car is a dream of p
27、eople, when it comes true, there will be a gray bigger one in your head. 3. Phony cars civilization The symbol of the USA became a new industrial country is that its output of cars overtook Europe in 1950. The symbol of Japan became a modern industrial country is that its output of cars overtoo
28、k the USA in 1970-1980. Cars had become a totem of people, as if a religion. Additionally, Cars hurt our in another way. Wealth was the level of differentiating a person is rich or poor, but cars broken this regulation. Cars announced to people: Yes, you are talented, but I am a car, you can not aff
29、ord to me! And some cars said: You are wealthy! Yes! But I am a car, I don't want to live with you. Cars gave us new value consciousness and civilization, cars civilization challenges traditional culture to fight. Cars expressed the importance of them for people by their selves' logic. Cars quicken
30、people's lusts and expressed the lusts are logic. It seems only cars civilization has right to give our life a definition. Maybe, several years letter, we will live in the cars civilization completely. We will know that cars aren't the culture of people, but people are the culture of cars. Dis
31、aster shook people's hearts. For solving these problems, England government constituted the law of air protection in 1956. German government did that in1959. in 1974, most countries in Europe constituted a united law about air protection which named ECER15 to define the criterion of end gas from car
32、s. Then, the countries in Europe constituted NO2, NO3 and NO4 criterion in1996, 2000 and 2005. This behavior was useful for air protection. At the same time, experts began to invent some apparatuses to decrease the air pollution from cars. For example, they installed HCTS① and EGR② which are new ap
33、paratuses can make oil burn plenty in engines. So that cars will release less CO and HC into the air. And some experts believe that the cars with mixed energy will be a project to solve the crisis of energy. Electricity, oil, gas and alcohol will be the energy of cars. It is convenient and good for
34、 environment. The TOYOTA company had invent the first mixed energy car named Prius in 1997. The releasing amount of CO2 of it is only 104g/km. This technology is not very executable, but I think the dream of environment protection of people will come true one day. The air around us will be disinfect
35、ed one day. When we want to use cars to accelerate our speed, we must know that Zhu Chongzhi discovered circumference without computers, architects built Tian An Men without the CAD software, and Xu Xiake went around China without cars. You see this, people can do many things well without those ma
36、chines. I don't want to encourage people to cycle anywhere, I only want to encourage people to search your rational thinking. Cars are not wrong, only the attitude of us for cars is wrong. From the above, we know some people had woken from trance, they began to concern our cities and environment.
37、I hope, more and more people will join us and do something to protect our live space. God created human, people created cars, we change our health for speed, it is a joke and it is stupid. More and more people hate living with these glacial machines. When we are driving slap-up cars and listening to
38、 music, we must thought about where the smog which from our cars is going. Is it going to the sky? Is it going to pollute the parks, brook and our houses? Or it is going to break our next generation's happiness. We should thought much more about this. ① HCTS:Trapping System. ② EGR: Exhau
39、st Gas Recirculation. Reference: 1.‘Cars and Environment’ Wei Ming shan Chemical Industry Press 2005 2.‘New Weekly’ 2004 3.‘Where Is The Road’ Liu Xiaoming Chinese City Press 2002 4.‘Motor Vehicle Emissions Control and Catalytic Converter’ Wang Jianxin
40、 Fu Lixin Li Weibing Chemical industrial Press 2000 ‘’‘’ Chengdu Textile College Graduation Paper Crisis In Cars Civilization Feiyu Xiang A thesis submitted to Department of Commerce and English Chengdu Textil
41、e Institute Abstract In modern society, cars which had been invented in industrial time become more and more important to our life, that we nearly couldn't live without them. But they bring more and more trouble to us when they give us convenience. The problems of traffic environment, energy and vanity shake our hearts. In this dissertation I will discuss the problems above of China and the world. Keywords: Traffic Environment Energy Vanity






