Driving oneself where ever one wants to go whenever one wants to go is more
luxury than was available to even the most wealthy 2 centuries ago. Now we
think nothing of driving 2 blocks for a video, or 200 miles to visit a
relative. In fact it is almost impossible to do some things without
driving. The only way I can visit my brother is to drive the 180 miles
myself. There is no form of public transportation that comes nearer than
10 miles of my house or 58 miles of his. Our whole society is based on the
ability to afford a car and to drive it just about anywhere you want at
anytime.
I like driving and an occasional road trip is the best way I know to see
this country. I have a full sized pickup to tow my tractors and cars to
shows, to haul home sheets of plywood for my woodworking interests, dead
engines for my Corvair restoration projects, loads of organic matter for
the garden, moving around beehives, etc. I cannot imagine living without a
pickup.
My wife has a Honda CRV, one of those small SUVs. She is a teacher and
hauls around boxes of stuff which is why she likes the Honda with all its
room. Also with our increasing age, those little cars are getting so hard
to get in and out of. Since we work at opposite directions from the house,
we cannot car pool.
There are things to do to reduce the load of a car on the environment. The
most important is not buying the latest LEV or electric car but to keep the
one you have in good condition and use it as long as possible. A new car
will not use in its lifetime the amount of energy required to build the car
in the first place. Every car you do not use up saves something like
100,000 gallons of fresh water. Instead of thinking of getting rid of that
old car, fix it, repair it, maintain it and use it for as close to forever
as you can.
Don Bowen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Valley Center, CA Senior Software Engineer
Contract software engineering
http://members.cts.com/crash/d/donb
http://www.oldengine.org/members/ihc14
http://www.oldengine.org/members/ferguson/
