And that sucks! I do little things every day to try to reduce my carbon footprint. And I’ll keep doing those things because they give me hope; they give me peace of mind. But like most people, when I do something, I want to do it right. I want to do the little things AND the big things.
When I saw Who Killed the Electric Car? a few years ago, I vowed to my husband: we’d never buy another gas guzzler. The film highlighted yet another way we have been manipulated, as a culture, into filling up. From the sprawling development of the suburbs, to the ripping up of perfectly useful streetcar tracks, to our poor public transportation system, we have never really had a choice but to purchase gasoline by the gazillions of gallons. It burns me up—like expensive fossil fuel in an internal combustion engine, you know?
Meanwhile…someone killed my car a few weeks ago, totaling what was supposed to be my “last” gas guzzler.
I intended to drive that 9 year-old rattle trap for 3 more years, until Gareth graduated from high school. By then, I was going to have miraculously saved up a whopping 40k to buy an electric car (err…that wouldn’t be the college fund, would it?). And I was going to have my solar-business-owning friend rig up some solar panels to charge it. Steve told me I was pipe-dreaming from the get-go. Of course he was right, but I held to my fantasies. “You never know!” I thought.
Well, I was right too. I certainly didn’t know. I didn’t know my car would end up in the junk yard before I could work my $40,000 miracle. The accident has forced my hand. To replace the van, I have only the pathetic $4,000 we got from the insurance company.
Dammit – where’s that last zero?!
Oh – got it. Instead of buying a 1 year old car, we bought a 10 (see it there?) year old car. Since no 10 year-old-electric car exists, a “new” guzzler sits in my driveway looking thirsty, waiting for me to screw on the tags so I can hurry off to the gas station and fill ‘er up like a good little enabler.
It turns out I’m green alright, green with envy for all the folks with enough green stuff to buy the green stuff.
Aaargh!
