Climate change and car use

is what should really be under discussion in this country.

I have never owned a car. I don't know how to drive one. I admit that it would be very nice to own a car. It would be very nice to simply walk out the door, open a car door, get into the driving seat and go wherever I wanted to go. 

As it is I have to plan my journeys around whether I can get there via tricycle and train. I need to think about whether my journey is really necessary if I am relying on a taxi or Middle Cat's "taxi service". I try very, very hard not to accept rides from other people. Over the years people have offered to take me to meetings, to events and other activities. My first question to myself has always been "Can I do it myself?" If I can then my answer has almost always been something like, "Thank you for thinking of me but I can get there." 

I know, it's stupidly "independent" of me. I do occasionally accept a ride somewhere of course. I will do it if I really need to be somewhere and I am doing something for someone else once there. I will do it if I need to carry more than I can safely take in the basket on the back. Once or twice there have been people who have lived at most two or three streets from me going to the same event at night. There was the day I was teaching something and the temperature was forecast to be over 40'C. (The event should have been cancelled but was not.) I accepted a ride from someone who altered the way she usually went but was not going to drive much further, if at all.

All this has never had anything to do with climate change because I have done it all my life. I am aware that, as grow older and even less mobile, I am going to need to accept more offers - if I really need to go somewhere. While I can pedal somewhere it is my intention to do so.  I need the exercise.

But all this makes me aware of the way other people do things. I am aware of how many cars there are on my regular routes. I tend to know how many families own more than one car. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say I know how many families own just one car - very few. Almost every person I know of driving age along my regular route to the library and the shopping centre owns a car. That can sometimes mean as many as four cars for one household.  

I wonder if this is really necessary? At the risk of sounding really ancient and geriatric I have to say that it really was not like that when I was in my teens.  Very few teens or post-secondary students owned cars. They rode bikes, used buses and trains or simply walked. Now they expect to own cars.

All sorts of excuses are used to justify the need for one. Apparently you need one if you work at a part time job or you play sport. (Maybe you do need to work - to pay for the expenses of running the car.)

 I pedal past the car park at one of the local state high schools and the cars in the student car park range from "beat up old things" to BMW's. My brother went to the same high school and cannot remember any student owning a car. A lot of them still had to go to things like footy or cricket practice after school and then get home afterwards. 

I know "electric vehicles" are supposed to be the environmentally friendly way of the future (although they are not as environmentally friendly as we are led to believe) but perhaps we really need to think about overall car use. There is much more to it than simply swapping from fossil fuel to electric. We need to think about how car dependent we are as a society. We need to invest much more in rail between major destinations and design ways that will make it preferable to use public transport.

If the Covid pandemic has done nothing else it should have shown us that relying on cars to get us where we need (and want) to go is not the answer to climate change issues.