More environmentalist guilt

(the one's in portland are)

1. carpool, but most of my coworkers don't get off work till very late (e.g. 10pm).

2. bike around, but I have spindly legs and can barely get the peddles moving. Also, it's really hot.

walking for 15 mins only takes 15 mins

you'd still have to drive to the station?

don't think saying you are "nominally" something helps or what you "often say" if it has nothing to do w/ what you often do

It'll take you about a week to get used to the bike ride. Plus, a fifteen minute walk is pretty comparable to a 2-5 minute bike ride. Just lock up at the station, like Ed said.

Energy consumption is the most obvious way of greening up. But, other than that, you can do stuff like buy local produce, organic meat, and biodegradeable soaps/detergents, etc., which is good, but has less impact, and is more to ease your conscience. For the most part, that stuff is mostly so people can throw their hands up and say that they're not part of the problem.

Basically: bike or get up 15 minutes earlier. It's not that hard, dude.

2) Force yourself to ride it everyday.

3) Get calves of steel (it seriously doesn't take long) and kick sand in the faces of guys at the beach with stick legs.

Wrong again. I work at seven different locations every week. Moving closer to one will only put me further from another.

-- Alex in SF (clobberthesauru...), July 24th, 2006.

I mean if there aren't there aren't and you should just drive the most efficient environmentally friendly car you can, but that seems pretty suspect to me.

-- Alex in SF (clobberthesauru...), July 24th, 2006.

Hahaha, have you ever lived in New Jersey?

As for the "Stop me from driving before I drive again" query... well, heh, I could encourage behavior that will force you to have a panic attack while on the road -- as that pretty much has stopped me from being a driver -- however that's a potentially dangerous way to do it.

Otherwise, a more sane way is to just ease into it.

Just restrict yourself to using a car in a Park & Ride type situation (assuming that's an option for you, and since you're in the Bay Area, I can't imagine it isn't). And don't feel guilty (at least yet) about using a car on the weekends. Weekend/leisure use of cars is a very small percentage of environmental fucking compared to mostly pointless routine Monday-to-Friday rush-hour parking-lots-cum-freeway commuting via car.

Browbeating commences...

You ONLY have to wake up 20 minutes earlier for public transport? My commute is a minimum of 2 hours each way - I have to wake up mega-early (usually at 5-5:30am) and have basically forced myself into a pretty rigorous schedule which took me about a couple weeks to get adjusted to.

The benefits?
- Improved health. I walk during my lunch hour, walk to switch from train to bus, walk whenever possible. I usually take a lunch with me which is significantly healthier than the usual fast food/corporate office park food alternates.
- More money! My gas expenditure has fallen by half. Packing my own lunch has cut my food expenses.
- More books read, more music listened to. Gotta do something on the train/bus.

okay, sorry, now i'm thread hijacking with a vaguely related rant: this summer I'm commuting by car for the first time, and it drives me crazy because I'm actually aware how much gas costs and how fast it is used up now. Luckily, it's only for the summer, but still, i'm realizing that there's not much choice for rural areas where places big enough to offer viable employment are 20-30 miles away! The people I work with almost all have to drive to work daily, spending ridiculous amounts on gas, not to mention time. Unfortunately, the bus system only operates between 8 and 5 and takes at least an hour and a half to cover a half hour of driving, so if you work 8 hours a day that is obviously not feasible at all. There's the carpooling option, but if you're in a rural area your chances of finding someone are iffy. I think this is probably something I've brought up on ILX before, but I don't see how people in rural areas can be "environmentally responsible," much less financially, even if they want to (except by picking up and moving to Boston, or something, but not everyone cna or should do that). They're not irresponsible, they're just screwed.

okay. rant over, and i want to live in a city next year!

*-anxiety
-environment
-don't want to spend the money (or don't HAVE the money)
-don't want the car to be an albatross (don't wanna worry about where to park it, whether it'll get towed or carjacked or broken into, what to do with it when i go away, etc.)
-don't want to become so used to the luxury of it that i become horrified by the real life outside the bubble

JBR very spot on there, I'm the same - it started out as "eek I dont like driving" but now, I've adjusted my entire life around this. I choose where I live and work carefully based on public transport access - I dont have any choice, really.

Sometimes it is frustrating not being able to easily buy bigger things like furniture, and going on holidays has proved to be a bit of a bitch - but its all good really.

most furniture stores will deliver if you give 'em some money.

I really need one of those granny trollies.

I can't cite a reference, but I remember hearing essentially the same thing. If your car is passing the smog inspections (assuming you have these) and gets decent mpg for a combustion engine, it's better to keep it.

I thought about about getting a Prius a couple years ago when I was looking for a car, but since I only drive about 4000 miles per year I decided the premium for that (over list price with a six month wait) wasn't worth it.

I should do more biking to work, as it's only 2 1/2 miles away, but in my dotage I've decided getting hit by a car would be worse than spewing a few pounds of CO2 into the air.

i'm really unsure about these schemes. i mean, they're a good idea at heart, but the whole thing seems in danger of becoming a dreadful middle-class get-out clause: "oh, i can afford to drive to work now without any guilt because someone somewhere is planting a tree."

it's a typical western-capitalist approach: shell out a minuscule bit of cash for something you can't even see because it assuages your guilt. the alternative - change your bloody lifestyle - has rather more going for it, i think.

my advice to the original poster would be: try your damnedest to get up that hour earlier and get the bus; if there's a day or even two a week where, to begin with, you don't manage and have to take the car, don't eat yourself up about it: at least you're trying. keep making the effort, and soon it'll become second nature.

better to try, and occasionally fail, than sit about moping because you, umm, can't really be arsed ;)

i'm really unsure about these schemes. i mean, they're a good idea at heart, but the whole thing seems in danger of becoming a dreadful middle-class get-out clause: "oh, i can afford to drive to work now without any guilt because someone somewhere is planting a tree."

Not to mention that there's only any point to them if nothing ever happens to the wood.

Forest fire? Whoops, there goes all that carbon into the atmosphere. Tree chipped to make cheap furniture? Just wait until the furniture gets trashed and rots. Your main hope is that it starts to create new coal reserves, I guess.

- More books read, more music listened to. Gotta do something on the train/bus.

That's one point. I have attention span problems, but I've never really had them on public transport. No tvs / internet to keep you distracted.

Also, I've found that driving in rush hour causes a great deal of needless stress. A fifteen minute walk to work isn't such a bad thing, it's a good way to come into work in the morning feeling good instead of angry about what someone did to you in traffic.

there was a month where i had a 2 hour commute each way and half of that was the soul-destroyingly unreliable / irregular buses to the railway station 5 miles away from home. (the 30 miles on train and tube was a doddle in comparison). it's always those last few miles that'll get you.

Total fare today will be $3.50, with parking at $1.50, and estimated gas consumption (to and from the train station) at less than $1 (for roughly 0.28 gallons). Total: about $6.

Driving to and back from work consumes about 0.8 gallons, which is at least $3.25@gal at the local gas station. So I'm paying ~$2.75 to save half a gallon per day, which translates to saving the equivalent of one tank of gas over 6 weeks; I'm contracted to work through December, which means I would save roughly 50 gallons in the 5 months left.

I wonder if you could somehow sponsor creation of coral reefs and foramnifera and such that store carbon longer term, maybe?

it's the circle of life

UH.

There are loads of artificial reefs, you dweeb.

Or something at least. For instance, all UCI employees and students get free bus service for the whole county, which is nice, and is how I get into work anyway.

But sure, yes, everybody immediately give up driving, flying, etc, that's a better solution, of course.

Meanwhile, soy is destroying the rainforest.

xp -- yeah, duh. Although, dudes, it's pretty nice out here.

Re the Kyoto treaty and tradeable emissions, I don't see this as necessarily bad. I am rather thrilled in fact, as the organisation I work for could be getting a windfall under this system. But I am wary of any suggestion that reducing the amount of carbon emitted should not be a main goal.

-- Shakey Mo Collier (audiobo...), July 25th, 2006.

This is one of the most OTM things ever said.

Uh doods, not to rain on your bike parade, but you know your home uses much more energy than your car. If you really want to lower your energy use/"carbon footprint," you can turn lights off, use more efficient bulbs, avoid the A/C, even unplug appliances when not in use.

or - and i know this is really radical, but what the hell - YOU COULD DO BOTH. you know: turn off lights AND not drive an SUV?

:)

This is probably incorrect, BUT it is definitely more convenient.

thailand government recently sank a lot of old garbage trucks offshore as some kind of artificial reef.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,19590935-13762,00.html?from=rss

"everything from concrete pillars to old rail cars have been dumped at 47 sites in the waters off southern Thailand."

Also you'll be sexier.

Policy developery types tend to suggest three solutions: use carrots (pay you extra for riding on the bus), use sticks (make rules about when you can drive and arrest you if you break them) or put a price on the effect you're having and charge you for it.

All three options have problems and all three require an external agency being involved. For you personally to make a change I guess you could try your own system of sticks and carrots (if I ride the bus I get to buy a nice lunch, if I drive I have to take sandwiches from home ?) but who's going to police that?

oh you know, people who can't arse themselves to care about the earth they occupy LOVE to peg all environmentalists as hypocrites and can't fucking WAIT for the moment they can pounce on them and go "GOTCHA" for leaving the porch light on for more than ten minutes.

the "save the planet" rhetoric of the old-school environmental movement has always struck me as innacurate and inneffectual. The planet isn't going anywhere, it will happily erase humanity and all the species currently on it and will endure long after all of them are gone.

I'm gonna go ahead and raise my hand here as someone who actually doesn't care, as I know I won't be part of that 'long-term viability'. Its 2006, and I expected a fucking jetpack and readily available AI by now. If I can't get that by now, then fuck the human race. If I don't have a hovercar by 2015, I'll be very cross.

small steps, yes, everything helps. and just because the boss is driving around in his hummer and jetting off places left right and centre doesn't give me license to do nothing. will buy those energy saving lightbulbs this lunchtime... (the last one i bought was too large for the bathroom light fitting so i ended up using it in living room instead and never got around to buying a replacement for the bathroom. bedroom could do with a couple as well - it's amazing how hot it gets in there with one 60w bulb going)

i think paul chadwick had a good idea in one of his Concrete books when he said we should wrap the environment up in a flag - make it a patriotic thing. hard when the government has huge oil concerns but...

er, yes? christ, it would be a LOT easier for me to drive in to work every day, and would work out cheaper too. but i don't, because doing so would make me a knob.

or, you know, be selfish about it; it's up to you! as you've proved, obviously nobody here can change your mind. i posted what i think was a sensible and reasonable proposal above; however, you seem dead set against doing anything to modify your behaviour. you've tried it once and that seems to be it.

i can only assume you started this thread in the hope that someone would come up with an excuse for you to carry on driving to work. there isn't one. so either deal with the guilt, or do something about it.

either way, you're right. lock thread, FFS.

Also, I've inquired about getting the company to start a public transportation program thing, though I kind of doubt that I'll get it started.

The *nearest* bus-stop is fifteen minutes walk, but due to the crapness of the bus timetable at that time in the morning, and the need to change buses, it would take me longer to use it.