0 miles driven so far this week
The Environmental Protection Agency writes:
Emissions from an individual car are generally low, relative to the smokestack image many people associate with air pollution. But in numerous cities across the country, the personal automobile is the single greatest polluter, as emissions from millions of vehicles on the road add up. Driving a private car is probably a typical citizen’s most “polluting†daily activity….
Efforts by government and industry since 1970 have greatly reduced typical vehicle emissions. In those same years, however, the number of miles we drive has more than doubled. The increase in travel has offset much of the emission control progress.
Although big, bad government and big, bad business are in large part to blame for the emission of pollutants and greenhouse gases, so is the big, bad public. That’s you and me. And when there is a lack of leaderhip from our president George W. Bush, who in response to attacks stemming from resource dependence tells us all to fight terrorism by going shopping, we will have to lead ourselves to more responsible behavior.
We is an aggregate. Part of the we is me, and it’s time for me to be accountable for my part of this mess.
Like most other people, I drive. To do my part in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, I really ought to drive less. I’ve thought this for a while, but I find it hard to carry out because so long as it’s just an inkling in my head, there’s nobody to hold me to any commitment but myself. I know of some people who in their lives seem to be able to successfully exercise self-discipline, but I am not one of those people. It’s been my experience that if I want to hold to any kind of commitment, I need to make that commitment to others who will hold me to it.
So here’s my commitment: I’m going to try, really hard, to drive less. And as a way to be held accountable, I’ll place a brief description of my driving behavior for the current week at the top of the first post of each day. I hope that, when I’m tempted to hop in the car when for some other reason than need, I’ll think twice: do I really want to add to that weekly total?
Returning to the collective level, what if this became a statistic that we shared with each other, and made a topic of water-cooler conversation the way other statistics seep into conversation: weather statistics, stock market statistics, sports statistics, and (in that weird understated way) income statistics? How would our behavior at the aggregate level change?
Last week’s driving took me over 500 miles. I hope this week turns out better.
