Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Decarbonize Your Life

How (and Why!) to Think About Driving a Little Less

Yes, it’s possible — even in the suburbs.

How (and Why!) to Think About Driving a Little Less
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

I love driving. Love it. And I am not alone.

“Automobility is our national way of life,” the historian and journalist Dan Albert has written. Getting your driver’s license is as close to a coming-of-age ritual as we have; cars inspire everything from our music to our movies to the design of where we live. At the same time, the automobile has boxed out other options for getting around, poisoned the air we breathe, and is the country’s most significant single cause of climate change.

Driving is so integral to American life that only 8% of U.S. households currently get by without owning a car (and 20% of those carless households, including mine, are located in the relative mass transit paragon New York City). For most people, “giving up driving” is more of a radical thought experiment than a realistic possibility.

Here’s the thing, though: You can almost certainly drive less than you do right now. Yes, that takes thinking and planning and doing some things differently than the way you’ve always done. (You can also check out our e-bike guide for more advice on that.) But the majority of car trips made by U.S. drivers are for distances of less than three miles. “If I just need to pick up a carton of milk, does it make sense to do that in a 6,000-pound metal box on wheels that is powered by dinosaur juice? Not so much,” Doug Gordon, the cohost of “The War on Cars,” a podcast about the fight against car culture, told me recently for our guide about how to drive less.

As urban theorists have argued for decades, America’s overreliance on cars has reduced our overall freedom. In addition to diminishing our options for getting around — it’s car or bust in places without safe bike lanes, public transportation options, or dense residential and commercial development — there is also the “inescapable dependence on a vast support structure comprising oil refineries, tanker fleets, service stations, repair shops, road crews, traffic police, emergency services, investment in road projects, manufacturing, licensing, registration, insurance, and all who work in these areas,” notes the Public Transport Users Association. “Seen this way, even a bicycle permits greater freedom.”

Cycling is, on balance, usually more convenient than driving (no need to look for parking!), not to mention far cheaper and healthier. Driving costs about $5,522 per year, according to the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics; cycling only 10 miles a week can knock off about $299. Other studies have found that the health benefits of cycling add an additional three to 14 months to your life, even when the possibilities of collisions and air pollution are factored in.

We can’t just Tesla our way out of the global emissions problem, either. To reduce transportation emissions by 45% by 2030, we would need 70 million electric vehicles on the road — in addition to reducing miles driven 20% per capita, RMI has found. Public transportation or cycling are the next best options for most people in most places.

E-bikes, especially, are incredible car replacement tools, helping to make otherwise daunting commutes manageable for a bigger pool of people (you don’t even have to be athletic!). While there can be sticker shock shopping around, there are also also all kinds of e-bike incentive programs and lending libraries available, and even higher-end models cost cost a fraction of a car at the end of the day. (“Well, but what if it rains?” As the old Scandi saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad weather; just bad clothing..)

Americans admittedly have one very good reason to resist letting go of their cars: Our infrastructure is so overwhelmingly car-centric that it is actively hostile to people who are thinking about alternative ways of getting around. “So often in the United States, we think about things like, ‘What is the most convenient way for every single person in a car to get from Point A to Point B with as few obstacles as possible?’” Alexa Sledge, the director of communications at Transportation Alternatives, a nonprofit organization that promotes non-polluting and safe travel in New York City, told me. “But that leaves so many people behind.”

This might actually be one of the biggest social benefits of using your car less: It will, in turn, open your eyes to how little room has been left for anything else. “Reimagining how we’re going to truly allocate our public resources — our public dollars, our public services — to serve everyone is so important,” Sledge stressed. Looking around, you’ll realize there is almost never a justifiable reason for your suburb or city to lack protected bike lanes or sidewalks or crosswalks — other than because they weren’t expected or demanded in the first place. What a failure of imagination that is.

And the best part? Even as you think about driving a little less, you can still love cars. A car can be an incredible freedom machine. But it isn’t the only one.

Green

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
AM Briefing

Exxon Counterattacks

On China’s rare earths, Bill Gates’ nuclear dream, and Texas renewables

An Exxon sign.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Hurricane Melissa exploded in intensity over the warm Caribbean waters and has now strengthened into a major storm, potentially slamming into Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica as a Category 5 in the coming days • The Northeast is bracing for a potential nor’easter, which will be followed by a plunge in temperatures of as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit lower than average • The northern Australian town of Julia Creek saw temperatures soar as high as 106 degrees.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Exxon sued California

Exxon Mobil filed a lawsuit against California late Friday on the grounds that two landmark new climate laws violate the oil giant’s free speech rights, The New York Times reported. The two laws would require thousands of large companies doing business in the state to calculate and report the greenhouse gas pollution created by the use of their products, so-called Scope 3 emissions. “The statutes compel Exxon Mobil to trumpet California’s preferred message even though Exxon Mobil believes the speech is misleading and misguided,” Exxon complained through its lawyers. California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office said the statutes “have already been upheld in court and we continue to have confidence in them.” He condemned the lawsuit, calling it “truly shocking that one of the biggest polluters on the planet would be opposed to transparency.”

Keep reading...Show less
Red
The Aftermath

How to Live in a Fire-Scarred World

The question isn’t whether the flames will come — it’s when, and what it will take to recover.

Wildfire aftermath.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

In the two decades following the turn of the millennium, wildfires came within three miles of an estimated 21.8 million Americans’ homes. That number — which has no doubt grown substantially in the five years since — represents about 6% of the nation’s population, including the survivors of some of the deadliest and most destructive fires in the country’s history. But it also includes millions of stories that never made headlines.

For every Paradise, California, and Lahaina, Hawaii, there were also dozens of uneventful evacuations, in which regular people attempted to navigate the confusing jargon of government notices and warnings. Others lost their homes in fires that were too insignificant to meet the thresholds for federal aid. And there are countless others who have decided, after too many close calls, to move somewhere else.

By any metric, costly, catastrophic, and increasingly urban wildfires are on the rise. Nearly a third of the U.S. population, however, lives in a county with a high or very high risk of wildfire, including over 60% of the counties in the West. But the shape of the recovery from those disasters in the weeks and months that follow is often that of a maze, featuring heart-rending decisions and forced hands. Understanding wildfire recovery is critical, though, for when the next disaster follows — which is why we’ve set out to explore the topic in depth.

Keep reading...Show less
The Aftermath

The Surprisingly Tricky Problem of Ordering People to Leave

Wildfire evacuation notices are notoriously confusing, and the stakes are life or death. But how to make them better is far from obvious.

Wildfire evacuation.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

How many different ways are there to say “go”? In the emergency management world, it can seem at times like there are dozens.

Does a “level 2” alert during a wildfire, for example, mean it’s time to get out? How about a “level II” alert? Most people understand that an “evacuation order” means “you better leave now,” but how is an “evacuation warning” any different? And does a text warning that “these zones should EVACUATE NOW: SIS-5111, SIS-5108, SIS-5117…” even apply to you?

Keep reading...Show less