Why? Cars are one of the earth’s biggest polluters

INSPIRING FACT

**The beautiful Belgian city of Ghent, went car-free in 1996. There were death threats at the time. Now, they say there’d be death threats if cars were re-introduced.**

Are they?

Ok, so get this…there’s an estimated 1.37 billion cars worldwide. Think traffic jam after traffic jam, right across the planet. Now lets multiply those daily and then let’s picture the billowing emissions. That’s not counting the energy that goes into creating the steel, rubber, plastics, paints etc before they’re ready to roll. No wonder the earth is choking.

That’s the big picture. Now let’s look at ourselves. Many of us have gotten into a few habits:

We travel individually each in our own little (or large) metal boxes, which we like to own.
We jump into our cars for short trips, without a second thought.

There’s no escaping it, we’re adding to the smoke. And most politicians aren’t courageous enough to make the unpopular long-term decisions like super-taxing petrol, diverting the money into transport infrastructure, or waving the evil oil-lords goodbye. Seems it’s us AND them. We’ll talk about the evil oil-lords later.

Ok got it. So how do I take action?

There’s a lot of innovation coming and governments need to urgently commit to creating the transport infrastructure needed to make it easier for all of us to get around in clean ways. Most haven’t yet. So, while we wait…

…let’s take responsibility for the part we can control right now. This week, pick a short journey you would normally do in the car - the school run, going shopping, getting to the station. Then, cycle or walk instead. If where you live makes that difficult, car-pool with a friend or get the metro or train instead. Repeat every week, or every day. And breathe.

But will it cost me more money?

Nope. Fresh air is (still) free. And feet don’t have to pay for parking.
If you’re buying a bike, it will upfront, then you’ll be saving on petrol and hassle.

We…

Aimee: I used to drive the 1.5 miles to and from the station to catch my train to work everyday. Then I bought myself a bike! Whoop. Best thing I ever did. Chills me out, gives me time to breath, feels good, takes less time than driving and is great for my thighs!

Sonia: Ok, I’m naming and shaming myself here. I used to drive to the park, which is a 10 minute stroll away, to walk my dog. My excuse is that the dog and I wanted park-time not road-time. Fair point? No, flimsy. And ironic. Now we trot past the traffic and it feels good.

“These boots were made for walking”

It’s serious. So let’s make some serious noise.
Please like, share, forward, comment, tweet. It’s on us all.