Worldwide Number Of Cars Surpasses 1 Billion - Can Mama Earth handle this ish?

All I can say is "wow!"  Can you freaking' believe the number of cars on the world's roads surpassed one billion last year? According to a study that has started a debate on what the rapidly-growth of car population would mean for the world's economy and environment.

According to a report from Ward's Auto released last week, the global number of cars exceeded 1.015 billion in 2010, jumping from from 980 million the year before.

So not surprisingly that China led the way in vehicle growth, with the number of cars on Chinese roads increasing by 27.5 per cent, amounting to half the entire global growth.

That gives China the world's second largest car population, with 78 million vehicles. But the United States still constitutes by far the largest vehicle population in the world, with 239.8 million cars, the Ward's study reported.

In fact, China would have to increase the number of cars on its roads nearly sixteen-fold to equal the number of cars in the U.S. on a per capita basis. Ward's reports that there are 1.3 people for every car in the U.S., while in China there are 6.75 people per vehicle.

If China were to have as many cars per capita as the U.S., its fleet alone would amount to approximately one billion cars.

But while China's car population has been exploding, the U.S. has seen a less than one per cent increase in its vehicle population, roughly in line with most developed economies.