The solution to climate change seems pretty straight forward to me. If burning fossil fuels is warming the planet, wouldn't a logical solution would be for us to burn less fossil fuels?
Recently, talking with regular (non Mustachian) people we meet, I've suggested various solutions, like, "How about we start encouraging more Americans to begin transitioning away from sedentary, car based lifestyles?" Seems like a no brainer to me. We'd burn less fossil fuels, emit less greenhouse gases, and humans would get more exercise by walking, riding a bike, etc. People sometimes nod their heads and passively agree with this statement but, more often, they say something along the lines of, "It'll never work. Americans are NEVER going to give up their cars."
When I start suggesting practical ways we might gently nudge average Americans to step out of their comfort zone and encourage them to start walking, cycling or taking public transport, their resistance starts to get more fierce. Yesterday, in a neighborhood online forum I suggested it might be a good idea for us to start gradually increasing the costs of car ownership. For example, I said, maybe we could get our city to start charging homeowners a fee to park their vehicles on publicly owned streets, and maybe we could encourage our state to start gradually increasing fuel taxes to make gasoline more expensive to encourage people to drive less and to raise revenue that could be used to improve public transport, build more bike lanes, etc. These ideas seemed like fairly straight forward, common sense, Econ 101 ways to push people to use their cars less, or to get rid of them altogether, but people in my neighborhood came out of the woodwork to attack me and my ideas.
Their main complaints seemed to be:
-Gas is already too expensive!
-There's no way I will EVER pay the city to park in front of my own god damn house!
-What about the poor people? How do you expect them to be able to afford to pay to park AND pay higher prices for gas? These ideas are crazy!
-What about all the people who *have* to drive long distances between their homes (in rural areas, 50+ miles outside our city) to come in to work every day? How can you expect them to pay more for gas AND pay to park too? This is nuts!
So, I asked my neighbors, "Well, what do you guys propose we do, then?"...crickets..........
Just feeling kind of frustrated. I mean, personally, I'm not that worried about climate change. We have enough money and are flexible enough that we'll be fine, pretty much no matter what happens. Poor people, people who are living paycheck to paycheck, probably are going to be the ones who will suffer the most, IMHO. Interestingly, middle class and up people are always the ones who trot out "poor people" as a kind of prop, I think, to justify their own wasteful lifestyles and unwillingness to change. I'm just feeling like, Why should I even care? Cheap gas is great for me and my family. Free parking? That's good for us too. I'd be willing to pay more for those things, because I think it might help to slowly begin weaning Americans off of their 100% car-based lifestyle, but if nobody else is willing to give up anything. at. all, why should I bother?
We've been keeping our thermostat set at 64F-67F. Over Christmas, we left town for a few days, and just shut the furnace off, because the forecast wasn't calling for the temperature to fall below freezing. The same neighbors who insist they can't go ANYWHERE without their cars, have also told us they like to keep their thermostats set at between 75F-80F... wtf?
I'm just feeling kinda hopeless. I mean, if 99% of Americans are unwilling to make even very small changes in their lives, what hope is there?
