Transportation

What we are doing:

• Avoiding driving
  • We all bike for much of our normal commuting, rain or shine .
    • Annual car/motorcycle miles are below 3,000 (estimate)
    • We keep the number of long driving trips very low
    • Daily (M-F) family bike-time: approximately 3 hours, totaling 25+ miles.
  • we take the train when possible for trips up and down the peninsula
  • walk or bike to local stores and restaurants. We are fortunate we can.
• Avoiding flying
  • We have probably gone overboard in our effort to avoid flying and have missed some opportunities for good fun and adventure abroad and afar
    • family trip from California to the UK in 2018 was great – and accounted for 1/2 of our 2018 family ecological footprint!
    • Fun and adventure within 100 miles rather than 1000+.
    • flights for work and music trips:
      • offsetting flights aggressively, about 2x to 10x offsetting, depending on who’s calculator you believe is realistic.
      • 2019: looking for offsetting donations which will annually sink or protect sinking of the equivalent CO2 emissions of the flight.
        • Stay tuned – we’ll post what we find.
      • looking for opportunities to eliminate business travel in 2019 by pushing the capabilities of communication tools.
• Buying food locally where possible, and buying as little processed food as possible so we can work from ingredients which come from closer to home.
• Buying/consuming as few products as possible (to minimize our consumption of items which rely on global transportation as well as resource consumption and emissions)
  • Clothes:
    • we buy very few new clothes
    • we buy second hand clothes
  • Electronic gizmos:
    • we buy almost none
    • we get most of the devices we do use from freecycle or used
    • we repair many of our older ailing devices when possible
    • we use our devices until they are archaic AND beat to death.

 

 

standard ideas for things you can do when getting around:

• Things you can do immediately:
  • stop using your car whenever possible
    • bicycle or walk whenever possible.
      • work commute, if you are closer than 30-45 minutes
        • (free exercise and a great way to inject some unfocused personal time and “just being” into your daily routine)
    • Flying – aggressively eliminate air travel
      • For work: use all available technologies to do your job without traveling by air
      • shrink your range of “new and exotic places” to be the things within a 100 miles of your home, rather than a few thousand miles.
        • lots of new, amazing things to learn and experience near you.
    • ……