De-icing salts help us get around in winter, but they corrode cars, crack roads and contaminate rivers and lakes. Scientists are working to develop better options by imitating natural antifreezes.
Electric cars get a lot of hype, but what really matters for the climate are excess emissions from the many millions of gasoline vehicles still sold each year.
Tim Breitbarth, Swinburne University of Technology; Adam Karg, Swinburne University of Technology, and Kasey Symons, Swinburne University of Technology
A person who exercises, attends sporting events as a spectator and takes their kids to the oval or swimming pool will create 935 kg of CO₂ per year if using their car.
Over the approaching holidays, people around the world will want to travel to see friends and family. Getting tested for the coronavirus can make this safer, but testing alone is not a perfect answer.
Life cycle assessments of electric vehicles show that they cannot fully eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions of personal travel. We also need bikes, buses and trains to solve our climate problems.
As the recent wave of Black Lives Matter protests have shown many people, racial bias, prejudice and discrimination very much still exist, but have become increasingly subtle and complex.
City streets were built to accommodate cars, but the COVID-19 pandemic has scrambled our transport needs. Many cities are moving to make streets more people-friendly and less car-centric.
Drivers and cyclists develop distinct identities of themselves and others in ways that mirror the formation of ethnic identities. And on-road segregation runs the risk of reinforcing this process.