How About This?

It’s easy for me: I’m in reasonably good health; I have a job I can get to by bike (and most of the way on an off-road trail), and my wife drives my kid to school most days.

But still.

I could drive a car way more than I do.

But I don’t, for a number of reasons, including the health benefits, the sheer joy of bike-riding, and the delightfully smug feeling I get to experience at seeing drivers stuck in traffic.

And also, because it’s the right thing to do for the environment.

(If you need any incentive for weaning yourself off the petroleum habit, just check out these pictures from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.)

So, here’s my commitment:

I promise to try as hard as I can to not drive alone in my car until the Deepwater Horizon spill is capped.

And I’m committed to continuing to endeavor to never drive by myself for as long as possible after that.

You could do it, most any of you, most of the time. Unless you are physically-disabled, or have a bunch of kids you’ve got to ferry from one place to another, or are just a lazy self-centered free-rider who doesn’t care about people living along the Louisiana coast, or animals and habitats threatened by global climate change, or future generations of people who will have to live in a desolate planet ruined by your own selfish ways, then you, too, could refrain from driving alone in your car most of the time.

You could.

Imagine if a whole bunch of people took this challenge seriously. Imagine how much less gas would be burned up every day? Imagine how much longer we could go as a society without have to drill miles down in the ocean to feed our ongoing addiction to oil.

Imagine how our descendants would look back on us with gratitude instead of scorn.

And don’t just imagine; do.