TIME: "Gas Prices May Be Rising But You're Still Not Paying for the True Cost of Driving"
This article takes a trip down memory lane to pull from a 2007 RFF article about the externality costs of driving.
So what [do the negative externalities of drivig] all cost in dollars and cents? To get an understanding, I dug into the past few decades of economic research and found one paper—a 2007 study from the research group Resources for the Future—that looked at the range of questions at play. If you add up all the mileage-related externalities, namely congestion, accidents, and local air pollution, the cost comes to a whopping $2.10 per gallon. The paper looked at climate change separately and estimated that the cost of driving to the planet only came to about six cents per gallon. But the paper notes one big caveat: it all depends on how much you assume climate change is going to cost.
