Climate change?

I keep saying that this "climate change" business is up to us. It isn't up to "the government".  The thing we call "the government" is really us in a "democracy" - when we have the opportunity to choose who represents us. And it is up to us in other ways. 

There are quite a lot of children in this street. It is a short street and there are fifteen children in it. Eleven of them go to the nearest junior primary/primary school - i.e. a school for 5-11yr old children. It is a brisk ten minute walk from here. There are no main roads to cross. They all get taken there in cars - even on fine days when one or the other parent is not working or is working from home. In the afternoon they all get collected again - by car. Each family has two cars.

Two more children go to a similar school a little further away. Yes, it probably isn't reasonable to have them walk there. The school was chosen "because we can drop the kids off on the way to work. It isn't out of our way". Ah yes, convenience for the parents.

The other two are now in high school. They walk to and from but they have always walked. The younger of the two walks with his mother - something he is soon going to be rebelling against but she doesn't trust him. He "dreams along and doesn't watch the traffic". But they walk because it is a one car family and their father works on the other side of the city. Their mother doesn't work and she is a "stay at home" mother who, like me, doesn't have a licence to drive. 

This pattern is repeated all over the city.  There is "no time" to walk children to school.

I know of another child who has been walking to school alone for as long as the school and her parents have considered it safe. She has a mother who really struggles with ill-health. She is an only child who has had, in many ways, to grow up too quickly. Her father leaves for work at least an hour before she needs to leave the house. She takes a mobile phone with her and phones her mother on arrival. Then she hands her phone in to the school office or her teacher. In the afternoon she collects the phone calls her mother to say she is starting out and then walks  home. She is a very sensible, very reliable, and highly intelligent child - the sort teachers "rely" on. But her view when I was discussing this with her? "The others could learn to do the same thing."

Yes, they could. School "drop off" and "pick up" contributes hugely to traffic. The difference during school holidays is so great that there always seem to be comments about it. The cost of doing it must be very high. There are all the associated expenses of running that second car - but it is "convenient".

This is not all though. I pedalled past one of the local high schools on Friday. The "student car park" was full. There were more cars parked in the streets around the school. "They need them to go to work/sport after school" we are told. "It isn't safe for them to use public transport".

I know that there are things which are not the same as they were when I was at high school. I cannot think of a single instance of anyone actually owning their own car. A few of the boys could drive - but they drove vehicles on the family farm. No girl had a licence to drive. They used public transport - even I used public transport. The only people I knew who did not use public transport were people who were physically incapable of doing so without assistance...and even then there was a blind man I knew who caught the bus each morning. The drivers knew to pick him up and see to it that he left the bus at the right stop. He would then wait for a colleague to walk over the busy road and see him safely across. If he had been able to get the assistance of a guide dog he would probably have done it alone. 

Petrol was almost $2.00 a litre on Saturday morning (with a voucher from the associated supermarket) - and people were still queuing to buy it. Putin's war has caused the cost to sky rocket and the flow on consequences are frightening. But we have to blame ourselves too. We have the sort of lifestyle that tries to tell us "we need to use the car" and "it is only safe if we have a car" and "there is not time". Perhaps we need to make it safe to use public transport and give ourselves time to do it. 

I will pedal on as long as I can. It's the least I can do.