Cars and me

Okay lets make something clear.....

I love cars, I was brought up in a car town. The kids I grew up with worked in the factory until they closed it down. Crikey I used to have a compendium of cars, models and stats in my head just like all the other kids. Cars are in my blood they were an indivisible aspect of my growing up. Had my first proper kiss in a car, got laid for the first time in a car, had a birthday party...yep in a car. Once filled a car with birthday balloons just so that I could romance a beautiful girl. So much of the beauty, pain anguish and excitement of my life has been framed by a motor windscreen. Even now when I get behind the wheel of my cheesy Nissan, the Bogan, the Kev whatever.... screams to get out. When I'm on the road with the stereo loud you can see the years (and the common sense) just flow away from me. Get the idea ? There will always be some part of me that will so so so looooooove cars, driving and the illusion of freedom they bring.

So why have I chosen to walk to work ? I'm a selfish bugger I don't want to give up my car......

The problem is that as I have grown older I've learned to look beyond, bonnet, mirror signal manouver. Every time I drive I know I am doing a bad thing. Me I'm bad; not just the other guy driving next to me, or the guy I am passing on my left or the Mum driving her kids to school...no I really mean me. I am as bad as everyone else and especially bad when I am the only one in the car.

That fact bothers me... but not as much as the fact that it has taken 23 years to figure this out and think a little differently about the issue. I'm worried that there may not be enough years left for everyone else to figure this out and more importantly to think so differently as to change the way we live; which is what is necessary in order to save the future. This is my responsibility as much as it is that of anyone else who gets behind a wheel.

I'm tired of ruining the lives of people I have yet to meet........The difference between my parents and I is that the truth and consequences of my actions are inescapable.

The equation I keep in my head is this.....Millions of years ago trees and plants were more abundant than they are now - they harvested Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and released Oxygen, keeping the Carbon. In so doing they created conditions essential to allowing mammals and in turn me to exist. While we were evolving, the trees and plants died and the Carbon they harvested went to earth with them. It made coal and oil.............All the time we burn these as fuel we reverse this process. Logically if we do this for long enough we will eliminate the vary conditions that allowed us to exist at all.

I like many others I am concerned about the fact that we have no means to re-capture the carbon dioxide and the elimination of important life giving conditions is set to take place awfully soon. How do I come to feel this....I look around and notice that this fuel we is starting to become costly because it is no longer in abundance. If this fuel is scarce then we may assume we have made considerable inroads into reversing natures carbon dioxide harvesting process. This should worry us all not just the Americans or the Alaskans or the Chinese but me too.