Recently on the way back from holiday in Cornwall, my car’s engine died. The repair quote, £5800. I love my car, for one reason only, it emits 121g/CO2 per Km and I get 61 miles to the gallon. That’s 550 miles (approx 880 km) for £40. I don’t have £5800 lying around, and if I did I wouldn’t want to spend it on a car.

After a bit of research, I worked out that for the cost of my monthly fuel and insurance bill, I could go to work by train for the same price. Food shopping would be possible by using local shops and on-line shopping. My CO2 footprint would drop, my mountain bike would be given a new lease of life, and my doctor would love me for my new exercise regime. I had turned a nightmare situation into something positive.

But all was not well. With exams to sit, and a house move on the horizon, I couldn’t get away from a niggling feeling in the back of my mind. How I would cope without a car? I should add that during this time, someone I knew was also admitted to hospital, and the inconvenience of not having a car also became emotional. Not having a car was not going to be easy.

But then the answer came. I could resurrect the car with a second hand engine. Alleviating my guilt by the fact that I was still recycling (albeit still feeding my addiction to oil) I scoured the internet. My lifeline came from a engine part recycling website called 1st Choice Spares. Thanks to a good friend, before I long I’d worked out t that I could buy a recycled engine and get it fitted for a total of £1500. Less than it would cost me to get another used car of the same efficiency.

The engine took a while to arrive. It took a while to fit. During that time I lived out my green commute dream by train and cycle. The days were a lot less stressful, no idiots on the road to contend with, and I even caught up on my reading. My thigh muscles burned for the first couple of days, but all round I felt good and virtuous.

Fortunately I was never sold monthly ticket, because South West Trains were planning to strike. (This was subsequently called off). Daily tickets got me by, until a couple of weeks later, I got my car back. The price of diesel had risen, but it was nice to have it back.

I had a lot of time to think about the decision I was making. The fact that I was reading George Monbiot’s book, ‘Heat’ made my decision all the more poignant. Was it the lack of cheap reliable public transport, or the lack of clean cars that annoyed me? Who should I blame for the corner I found myself in. I felt disenchanted with the government for not doing enough to make public transport cheap and I felt angry that car makers for not doing enough to force me to buy a greener vehicles.

So what did I do? Well I channeled all that anger. I lobbied the EU parliament along with thousands of members Friends of the Earth to ask them to impose tough CO2 limits on the production of new cars, and made myself a note to talk about the train ticket price issue with my MP next time I saw him (this would have been another thing difficult to do without a car).

In reality we can all turn the lights off, buy green goodies and follow the grassroots movement for environmental improvement, but we still have to convince those that can make changes to the national grid or make deep structural improvements. With all the good will in the world, we still have to convince our leaders that there is no further wiggle room, otherwise everything we do today will be nothing but tokenism. It’s going to take governments and international agencies to make bold, unpopular decisions to save humanity from disaster.

Today I got stuck in a traffic jam.

Yours,

A guilty car owner.

I’m Joel and I’m excited to be part of the Green Guys Global team. I usually blog over at Life Goggles where we also write about green stuff, but mix it up with music and videos.

For those that know me know that I have just recently (last week!) emigrated to the West coast of the US. On the way though I spent 2.5 weeks in New Zealand and a short while in Australia and thought I’d pass on some thoughts regarding our trip.

We travelled on a coach tour in order not to pollute more with our own vehicle. There were many optional excursions that were to organic farms, or eco tours, in fact a member of our group had just spent two weeks volunteering on community projects and there were others on offer. New Zealand feels very eco friendly, however I’m not always so sure it is. The huge number of tourists prevent it from being so in many ways. The numerous hotels we visited for just one night made be appreciate Charles’s tip of bringing your own sleeping bag, and whilst they were (quite rightfully in some ways) proud of their jetboat rides and helicopter trips that were offered almost every day, the environmental cost of these trips must be huge.

Lake Tekapo and The Church of the Good Shepherd - New Zealand © Joel Williams

I did find a lot of information about handling waste. There they seem to have the 5 R’s:
- Reduce,
- Re-use,
- Recycle,
- Recover and,
- Residual Management.

The Christchurch museum had an excellent section for children and adults alike on this topic, including an example cross section of landfill over the last 50 years.

Now, like Southern California, most of Australia has been undergoing a drought for many years. I therefore expected to find a lot of messages about water conservation, yet this wasn’t the case. I wasn’t actively looking for it of course, but I didn’t think I’d need to.

They do have Eco Tourism Australia which certifies accommodation and tours if they are “environmentally sustainable, economically viable, and socially and culturally responsible”, which is a great thing, however I expected to see more for some reason.

There are whole University degrees devoted to the subject of sustainable tourism (and Green Girls Global has a great article), and whilst I highly recommend New Zealand and Australia for some many reasons, sustainable tourism wouldn’t be one of them. Yet.

After spending two nights at the motel and bed and breakfast I have learned something. When travelling always bring a sleeping bag to sleep in and to bring some towels. Most Motel you stay in usually uses so many chemicals in cleaning their sheets and towels and not to mention all the water needed to wash them. The sheets and towels at our Motel last week smelt pretty bad and decided next time when we go travelling to pack some towels.

Many Motels in the morning have breakfast and they usually serve you with styrofoam plates and cups and plastic silverware. I suggest that next time bring your own plates, mug for your liquid, silverware and cloth napkins (or you could reuse napkins from restaurants and fast food that you have eaten from.), etc.

Many of these things you may need when travelling but when I had stayed the night at the Bed and Breakfast it was different. They had used real plates, silverware, glasses the whole bit. even the sheets and towels didn’t smell at all. This was the first bed and breakfast I had stayed in so there may be other Bed and Breakfast that use non-renewable items such as silver wear and plates so packing a mug, silverware and cloth napkins wouldn’t hurt much.