Jan 31 -- Live the good life - Ditch your car

In case anyone missed the news yesterday, Exxon Mobile reported their fourth quarter net income at US$11 billion. Most notable about that is that this is the highest profit ever made by ANY company in ALL of US history. This leaves me cold on many levels.

I'm not usually one to weigh in on political issues -- not because I don't have opinions, but because I usually don't have solutions. Without solutions I think it's a waste of time to sit around complaining.

This however, is one issue on which I see a very obvious solution: ditching the car.

I've been a big fan of this a long time. I grew up in a semi-rural area where every kid had a car by age 16 because we had big spaces and no alternatives. But not long thereafter I lived in a series of places where options like train, bus, ferry (the beautiful Sydney ferry) and best of all foot were the norm. (interrupted by a brief stay in Dallas, which was impossible without a car). This culminated in 2 years in Paris, which must be the most walkable city in the world. My daily commute to my glassworking classes was 40 minutes on foot each direction - and once I got used to it, it was my biggest pleasure of the day. I turned on my tiny portable radio, watched passing people, saw the seasons change, watched shops open and close, leaves come and go, and felt the texture of the city.

And there's also hiking. I began hiking, in a true fashion, in California. I was a total hiking wimp until one summer when a friend of Marco's came and gave me no choice. At first six hours seemed like an unimaginably long hike, because nobody had ever told me to do that before. Then a two-day hike. Then I went up my first mountain (4000 meters) in 2003. The same year I did my first eleven-day hike (100 miles). The next year Marco and I crossed the Pyrenees on foot from France to Spain and did many more 2-5 day hikes. Now when I gear up with my backpack and my grungy and now very worn hiking boots I am excited, like getting together again with old, beloved friends.

For the past two months, however, I'm back at home, in a place just as dependent on the car as it was in childhood. I walk on occasion to Afton or in the forest. But apart from that I have to use the car, and I get no real other exercise. I feel rusty and mushy. This is the kind of situation that gives rise to the most ludicrous of American institutions -- the fitness gym. People expend energy (gasoline & electricity) and money on cars and appliances to create a physically effortless life. Then they get astounded that they're fat and in bad health. So, they drive to a gym and pay to use electrical equipment that expends their physical energy while producing absolutely nothing useful.

I don't find any pleasure in that. And I am not pleased with Exxon-Mobile raking a windfall on a car-dependent society. And it just so happens I am on the brink of moving to a new place, and establishing a new phase of my life. So it's a good time to make a long-term plan to ditch the car.

Marco and I are planning to move to the countryside somewhere outside of San Francisco. We are both in favor of towns (maybe Santa Cruz? Santa Rosa?) that allow us do things like grocery shopping and other errands on foot. Then I'm going to get us bikes (a recumbent bike just 'cause I like them) and see how much further we can go on bicycles. Can we do long cross country trips that way? Bike into downtown San Francisco? And I'm going to do everything I can to make my daily work commute 100% car-free. If there's a place in the US to try this, it's probably California right, even though it's still a car-dominated place.

But "wait wait", you say. "That's all well and good for someone who can afford that lifestyle, but what about people with geographic or economic constraints?"

Well I don't have a perfect answer for that. It's easier to change my habits than to change society. But here's a go:

If people who have the economic means to adopt a relatively car-free lifestyle do it successfully and with pleasure, that's naturally going to attract the interest of other less wealthy, middle-income-bracket people who are fed up with long commutes in traffic and high gas prices. These people, in turn, may maneuver to make changes in their own lives and finances that they wouldn't have considered before, such as also trying to move to towns with car-free possibilities. They may also petition for better pedestrian and bike options and in their own towns. They will succeed in getting these changes if there are already existing successful models that will convince pragmatic city planners and profit-oriented investors.

So models are key, a set of towns and communities showing people living happily on foot, on bike, on rollerblade are essential. One example, Boulder, Colorado, is already a hot model for city planners these days. If a number of communities are able to organize themselves in ways that highlight real, concrete benefits of a car-free structure in a way that's likeable and easy to understand, that's going to generate a wider interest that reaches into suburban crowds and crowds that haven't ever considered pedestrian or bike transportation. City planners will catch on and incorporate these goals into longer-term city plans that may even reach the lowest income neighborhoods. The more people who like these changes, the more they will further press for change.... a contagious and engaging spiral.

Welll, this all may be complete bullocks, as the Brits say, but it's an idea.

I just want to reduce use of fossil fuels, saves money, create a healthy happy body, bring us back in contact with the tactile, human side of our surroundings (i.e gets us out of the rolling glass and metal box on the freeway) and make life a little sweeter and a little more pleasurable. For all.

The most concrete way I know how to change society right now is to change my own tiny little piece of it.

If anyone's got anything to add, I'm open.