The Politeness of Certain Unsustainable Actions
Just got back from a funeral on the West Coast. Its a 4 hour drive from here and we could have car pooled with my cousin, but because he was going over and back again in a short space of time, Matthew and I decided to drive our otherwise empty car over so we could stay on and be with the family. We could have bused, but what a palaver. We would have had to take an extra day off work to arrive at the funeral at the right time, as it was we charged over, on the road at 7am. It was also nice having a car there. We could help drive people who had flown in or go somewhere to pick something up etc. Cars are warm, quick and have nice stereos. We both love driving and in this situation it just seemed like the more considerate, easy thing to do. What are your thoughts? Basically I am weighing up the untraceable amount of global environmental degradation against what seems like an enormous effort/inconsideration of not going, or busing or goodness knows what. Imagine if we hitched? The only thing is every car trip in isolation has an undetectably low environmental impact and is more often easily justifiable. Thinking like this is simply a hand holding pattern. I guess it will turn out to be like the rubbish free year, everything will seem insurmountable until we actually put things in place and work out in advance how to propel ourselves around the country sustainably. There is the hybrid car option, but I think they might still be a bit out of our price range. Is there a certain low level of car driving that would be acceptable? Maybe if we all drove 30km a week? If anyone has any understanding of these issues we’d love to hear from you. « Organic Fruit and Vegetables The Politeness of Certain Unsustainable Actions Hiatus » 7 CommentsLeave a commentYou don't have to enter your email address or website when you leave a comment, but you're welcome to! |
I just came across your site via trade me. Love what you did here although it’s a pity I didn’t find you before the challenge ended! If you feel really bad about the travel you could always try and off-set the carbon emission with a tree planting session? Go well!
Ah you guys always make me think. I am addicted to my ability to jump in the car whenever I want, for whatever reason. And I used to bike everywhere! Time to get that bike out of the garage and fixed up. No real answers for your question though sorry. Look forward to reading other people’s ideas on this.
Hi, we live in the middle on nowhere, an hour away from our grocery store so have to relie on our car, no public transport out here. I think sometimes you have no choice but to use the car.
I can’t drive so have to live with public transport facilities. This means that some of the green lifestyle I used to be able to follow when there was a driver in the household have gone out of the window.
I suspect that in my case the use of private transport was more than balanced by the other lifestyle choices in the past. And the use of public transport doesn’t make up for the lifestyle of living in a more urban situation. Very swings and roundabouts decision – especially if cash constraints are taken into account.
Totally. We are so reliant on cars now and we have gotten into situations where we really can’t live without them, like living an hour away from the nearest grocery store! And Christine raised an interesting point too, because its not a perfect world, sometimes you might be able to live more sustainably by being able to jump in your car and access a farmer’s market or locally made clothing or whatever. I’ve been thinking about all this and I’ve realized I was thinking about the driving situation like it was a global issue set to stretch out infinity without changing – which of course is radically untrue. We have already hit peak oil, prices are slowly climbing and will continue to climb. It might be radical, it might be a slow squeeze but in ten, twenty years time the conversation will be different to what it is now. The bottom line will be different. Economic might force corner grocery stores and home deliveries into existence. Wouldn’t that be an easier situation? Maybe public demand will allow amazing public transit systems to exist. Being stuck driving now reflects a lot of what’s been happening over the last 50 years, for now, I am going to continue to ask myself do I really need to drive and bike when I can or car pool etc, maybe a bit of driving isn’t the end of the world given that its not a situation that needs to be sustained anyway. When we have to make the move to horse and cart so be it.
Waveney,
Having a car and driver enabled us to live that bit further out of the town and to have a house with a garden and also vegetable plot. It also enabled us to collect sea coal and drift wood off the beach for heating, seaweed for composting for the garden and in the days before going vegetarian to go fishing when the tide was right for food for the larder. Clothes were always dried on the washing line – very effective nearly on the seafront.
I’m not sure if the open fire that heated the hot water through the back boiler was exceedingly good with regard to emissions but it was one of the most effective hot water systems I’ve ever had access to and very cheap to use. It reduced the electricity bill greatly – oh and when fire was running there was the chance of boiling the kettle. It also saved a lot of wooden fence panels that we gained through work from going to landfill – think kindling wood. The small community also had a great organisation with regard to sharing logs for fires.
There was also a lot of swapping of hand me downs for children with regard to toys and clothes.
So a car to go down the road to do the shopping for things we couldn’t produce a mile up the road was a small price to pay for the other aspects of living where we did. And many a time we all resorted to the dreaded bikes if only one of us wanted to go shopping.
I like your idea about setting a maximum mileage per week. I also like the idea of drawing circle a specific distance from your house and saying “trips within this circle cannot be done by car”. So far, we have only committed to biking/busing to work and using the car on the weekends – better than some, but still not sustainable.