Before I fell asleep last night, I started thinking about the biking my husband and I do. I calculated out our car's approximate gas mileage and realized that, even if we did no other biking than to and from the bus stop each day, we're saving about 1.5 gallons of gas per week. But, we do bike elsewhere so I'd estimate that on any given week we avoid at least 2 gallons of gas per week. (Assuming that we're always driving at optimal efficiency, rather than taking multiple trips for each errand. i.e., if I drove I would still be stopping at the grocery store on my way home from the bus rather than making a special trip to the store after getting home.) This might even be a very conservative estimate, since I'm mostly using highway mileage and the driving we avoid is almost entirely city driving, at a lower fuel efficiency.
But, we'll roll with the 2 gallons of gas/week estimate for what we avoid. Each gallon of gas we don't buy saves us $2.26 (based on last week's national average, according to the Googles), or $235.04 each year. (2 gallons@ $2.26 x 52) This also avoids putting about 2080 lbs. of carbon into the air ((approx. 20 lbs. per gallon of gas x 2) x 52), a not-insignificant chunk. The average American has a carbon footprint of about 20 tons per year. Assuming that we have the same footprint as most (which I doubt, but whatever) then we're reducing our 40 tons by slightly more than 1 ton (at my conservative estimate). Not too shabby, especially since we're doing it mostly just by biking a short distance every weekday.
But, it got me to thinking about what it would be like if everyone in the country reduced their carbon footprint by that one gallon of gas per week. At $2.26 per gallon, we would collectively save $38,103,157,040 over the course of a year. Holy shit. ($2.26 x 52 x 324,227,000 [estimated # of Americans in 2016]). We would also avoid 168,958,040 tons of carbon. Just from one gallon of gasoline each, each week.
I do realize that this is crappy back-of-the-envelope math and I'm probably missing a whole bunch of variables. (Like the financial cost of wear and tear on vehicles, the insurance savings if you get into the low-mileage pool.) BUT, it is kind of neat to see how the collective action of such a small thing can help a huge amount. There are always people, even on these forums, who will answer, "We're fucked, you can't do anything so don't even try," when people ask what they can do to lower their carbon footprint. They miss the point that it's not about that one person's actions, it's about our collective action. Why can't we each reduce our footprint by one or two or three tons? How much better off would the world be if we all did?
And if the environmental stuff doesn't sway you, then the financials should on these boards. How much better off would we all be pocketing that fuel savings each year, rather than spending it on gasoline. Is that really what you want to be spending money on? Really? At my calculations, if you avoid one gallon of gasoline each week for a year then you've saved approximately $117. Someone else recently calculated how much their daily cost of living is and figured out how many days of freedom their 'stache meant. $117 is well over a day's freedom for my family, especially when it's a savings rather than an expenditure. (I don't even want to do the calculations for how much more money I'd need if this was spending and not saving. You can figure that one out for yourself.) How much freedom would one gallon of gas each week buy for you?
So this is my challenge. Figure out a way to cut out that one gallon of gasoline each week for 2017. If you think that's easy, try to cut out one gallon each week for each member of your household. Feel free to post numbers here, and updates. I'd really like to see what ideas people come up with for saving on fuel, especially since I realize that there are a lot of people still not sold on the idea of biking.
Be badass. Try it. Push yourself out of your comfort zone.