Gridlock
The best way to reduce a large expense is to cut down one of the largest causes. This is a law and I can not remember who said it. It works in finances and it works with people’s carbon footprint, and sometimes both.
If a person was to improve his finances, he would achieve the goal faster if he stopped spending on the largest ticket item, say car related, than he would if he was to go frugal on smaller things like drying clothes on the clothes rack and not the drier. When I started to read personal finance blogs, I was motivated to cut down on these small expenses: buy food in bulk, drive less, eat out less, buy generic etc. It barely caused a dent in my expenses and my savings barely went up. It was frustrating. I was restricted from doing the things I like and there were not enough savings to show for it.
Similarly, when I set on the path of reducing my carbon footprint, the suggestions floating around in the web were the high-effort-low-impact ones. I stopped using disposable plastic bottles, used the water heater only half an hour every other day, said no to Styrofoam and looked up information on offsetting carbon. The largest impact, to both, my personal finances and my carbon footprint were when I sold my car. All I had to do was ride my bike everywhere. My savings have gone up, my carbon footprint has shrunk and I have lost weight without even trying. Win Win. I did not even have to invest in high capital initiatives like solar panels. My living in a small apartment lets me not have energy wastage like yard maintenance and cooling costs that most single family homes are plagued with.
The primary reason Shek’s Footprint talks about bicycle advocacy more than about recycling and alternative fuels is that bicycling takes a large chunk out of the footprint in one swift go. It is the rational and healthy way of getting around. Therefore, the million dollar question is: how do I get other people to adopt this idea? The gridlock of political awareness of bicycling and subjective safety of bicycling in people’s minds prevents more people to discover this way of life. In several conversations with bicycle advocate David Hembrow (link), I have come to the conclusion that for real impact towards citizen’s personal finances and health, the government needs to realize that bicycling is the future of daily commute. In my recent conversations with Matt Uhrig from Bikejax (link), I have realized that talking about sharrows (wikipedia link) and urban trails is like putting band-aid on a large wound. It raises awareness but does not much for subjective safety of the people.
To do it right, like these guys did (link), one must look at Netherland’s bicycle infrastructure. Till then the gridlock lives and it will take a lot of courage on the people’s part to get out and try this way of life. They are the true heros.
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