I just finished watching the below video on the CBC’s Sunday Night, which follows a busy urban doctor trying to reduce his carbon-emissions footprint to nearly zero.
Tomas Laslovboda, a physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto chronicles his path to changing his personal choices to reflect his growing environmental consciousness.
The video runs 8 minutes.
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As someone who attempts to make personal changes and choices that reflect both my social and environmental concerns, I found the clip to be an excellent example of how ‘everyday people’ can make huge strides in having a personal environmental impact.
I was born and raised in one of the richest suburbs in all of North America. Mississauga, Ontrario, is nearly 100% built around car-based transportation. It’s filled with narrow sidewalks that abruptly end in favour of additional lanes; dozens of nearly identical strip-malls with deep pastures of parking lots; and has only 3 decent longer stretches of road where bike lanes are visible- in a city of nearly 1 million people.
Many of those inhabitants, like my father, sit in a car and crawl on the QEW highway for over an hour in the morning traffic commute to work in Toronto. The drive, unencumbered by the gridlock is around 20 minutes.
The Go Train, with express routes to and from Toronto only takes 40 minutes, and slightly longer on off-peak hours. He lives a 10-minute bike ride from the Go Train station, a ride I know well having took it every morning to hop on the train and take it to school after I had sold my car and used the money for education. It can be accomplished by walking in about 20 minutes.
So, easy math- it would actually take him less time to walk and take the train to work, than drive. But drive he must if he is to retain the parking spot on the third floor 14 years at a bank has earned him.
When I owned my first car I was already 20. It was a slightly used Neon, with low km’s. After owning it for 2 years, throughout half of which I worked a job I could walk to, I decided to sell it. Firstly, I was tired of paying close to $700/month for a car in which I barely drove. Secondly, I had become much more environmentally aware, and after making conscious decisions about clothing, food, and other amenities, I decided that I could rid myself of the environmental guilt and the financial burden and be done it.
My life living without a car, is not burdensome. I live close to the kinds of transportation that will take me to visit my brother in Guelph, my mother in Mississauga, and friends in Toronto. From my spot at the nape of the escarpment in Hamilton, I am perfectly capable of traveling anywhere in the world- without a car.
One significant point made by Tomas in the clip is that making these kinds of changes feels more difficult than they are. Which lays out just how ubiquitously embedded into our cultural consciousness life with automobiles has become.
And you thought my hatred for cars was confined to the fact that a 1998 Brown Lincoln LE hit me while I was walking across the street to take the bus home from work.
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I know exactly what Thomas was saying in the clip about the parental resistance. I have changed my life in order to eat conscientiously and make as little of a contribution to landfills, pesticide usage, etc. I bought reusable grocery bags in order to cut down on petroleum waste and not have those bags sit in a landfill for the 2000 year life that they have. But all the things i have done, eating better, recycling everything possible, researching the products i buy, all of these and more have been met with resistance from my parents. I will be graduating from the University at Buffalo in a few weeks, so i haven’t lived with my parents for 4 years now (not including summers), and to have them tell me how ridiculous it is that i use recyclable grocery bags and purchase organic products etc sometimes makes it difficult. So i definately understand what he was saying in the clip. This is a time for change, for educating ourselves and saving this little blue dot. But the resistance from previous generations (not to over generalize) is going to be a barrier to making things happen. Though i hope that i will be wrong.
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I’ve been met with that resistance, as well- I try to view it as an opportunity to educate. I once said to my father:
“Just because you fail to make the connections between your choices and the results around us, doesn’t mean I’ll pretend I don’t too. You preach about how all the pennies add up, but can’t think the same way about all the choices you make in your daily consumption of the world’s goods.”
Since that day he’s changed some, but refuses to give up some of the amenities and luxuries afforded him by his lifestyle.
So be it. Fighting others, least of all family, is not what I do these things for. I do them to fight myself to be smarter about living my life, first and foremost.
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Agreed. I’m healthier and less of a planetary burden because of it, and that, to me, makes all of the difference.
I don’t think it’s ever become an argument at my household, more of my parents just rolling their eyes at me, which is sometimes just as bad. “Oh, he’s at it again.”
With time i suppose.
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If you’re in a major urban centre with most of your family nearby, I can see the argument for ditching the car, but if you’re in a smaller, outlying city, or in the country, there’s no way the usage of cars is going down due to the lack of decent public transit. I’ve noticed that some urbanite environmentalists tend to be really narrow-minded in their thinking, having never much experienced life outside a city and/or its immediate, connected suburbs.
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Ugly, i’ll definately agree with that. It’s not possible for people outside of a city to ditch their car. But may parents could make a better choice than a 6 Litre GMC Sierra and a midsized SUV as their daily commuters when they don’t have any children in the house anymore. It’s not about ditching your vehicles and completely eliminating all of your carbon emissions. It’s rather about reducing the size of your carbon footprint in whatever ways possible, even small steps help tremendously. It’s not like i’ve ditched my car, but i keep it maintained to keep its fuel efficiency maximized and walk as much as possible.
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Its really too bad that cities like Saskatoon in which I reside are not set up whatsoever for an individual not to own and drive a car. From my girlfriends house to campus is about a 12 minute drive, but on the bus it would take the better part of an hour and a half.
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Here in Vernon we have buses that run every hour for about 3 hours or so and no service on Sundays…it’s just brutal.
We live in an area of town that buses don’t even go to and our road has no shoulder so riding a bike is basically taking your life into your hands.
Edmonton was great. You could ride the bus anywhere and ride your bike anywhere safely. I hear Calgary is the same.
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Santacruzstinkyd - take the opportunity to write to your city’s mayor, chancellors, and MP’s to tell them that you support the choice for public transit, and want to see more infrastructure created to support wider public transit adoption for your city.
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i love my car but living in a city like that i dont see a reason to have one. he’s really not that crazy to do that.
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Which lays out just how ubiquitously embedded into our cultural consciousness life with automobiles has become.
I think the phrase cultural unconsciousness might be a little more fitting… :)
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Dale, have you seen Gary Burns’ Radiant City? It’s about urban sprawl in Calgary, entertaining and worth checking out.
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J.Canuck - well said.
Serfin- No, but I will check it out.
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Thanks Serfin, I was wondering what that film was called!
Calgary is setup pretty good for biking, there are a ton of trails everywhere. The C-Train is kinda goofy though, only serving NW, NE, downtown and South Central, everyone else is left out.
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I’ll be heading back to Vernon after living for a year in Montreal, and I’ve been spoiled by the abundance of public transport. Like Santacruzstinkyd was saying, once an hour makes the buses pretty pointless. Last year I was going to school at the college, and I made a conscious effort to take the bus, but if I missed it, I basically gave up on going to school that day. Unfortunatly the college is also the only place in Vernon I’m not willing to bike to, at the top of a huge hill and all.
I’ll see if I drive at all this summer or not. I don’t know how to drive standard and the other car’s gone, so…
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Calgary is unfortunately struggling to keep up with transportation issues. The urban sprawl on the fringes of the city means that taking public transportation is next to impossible, for some working downtown, making that commitment means an hour or more one direction.
I don’t own a car, mostly because I can’t afford one while going to school, but owning a car gives people an excuse to drive instead of taking public transport. I have friends that would rather drive 2 minutes instead of walking, or drive instead of taking the C-train (which is very close to a lot of residential areas). It becomes a crutch.
The tragedy in Calgary is that while our infrastructure is being improved and roadways become wider and more accessible for “commuters”, little attention is paid to improving public transportation. It’s like we’re encouraging people to pick up their keys and drop the bus pass…
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Wrote a letter to city council requesting better transit, bike paths.
It’s worth a try. The only reason they are doing any improvements to our road is b/c a big golf resort community is being built in the hills around our house.
God help us all.
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Jesus. Well, regardless, that’s awesome Santacruz.
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In regards to the urban sprawl of Calgary, I live in the northern end of that sprawl, and the commuting is as bad as you say it is. On average it takes me the same time to bike to work as driving (13.5km). The infrastructure for public transit is really struggling to play catch-up in this city. It’s so lacking that it really isn’t worth it for the suburbanites to take transit, unless you want to take 3 buses and a 90 minute commute.
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I sympathize with everyone who lives in the outskirts of a city. I myself live 30 minutes walk from the closest bus route. It’s ridiculous how the suburbs around the cities were designed in such a car-friendly way but these days the whole reason for leaving the city and “moving to the country” is redundant because inner city living isn’t nearly as bad as it was at the advent of suburbia.
One of the most striking things many people take for granted is their choices and how they affect their day to day life and the way it impacts the environment. It’s probably very possible for a lot of people who live in the suburbs to move in to the city, but it takes a little more effort and those places are usually a little more expensive - but when you take the fact that you’d be saving hundreds in gas, insurance and possibly repairs on a vehicle it begins to make more and more sense to take that leap of faith.
As someone who’s planning to go to Europe this summer, his travel by boat scene was inspiring; I’ll have to look into that. :)
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I find it fascinating how people who actually give a damn and take the time to make informed choices (that also benefit others) are the ones who have to defend their actions and explain to the rest of the self-absorbed sheep in society why it is important. Those who make the easy, costly choices never have to explain their actions.
I don’t buy the defeatist argument that “No one else does it, why should I - it won’t make a difference”. The reasons why should be self explanatory to anyone with a functioning brain.
The key word to watch out for in today’s society is “convenience”. This word has been taken over by marketing types. For all intents and purposes, almost everything that is marketed as “convenient” is bad for your health, the environment, the lives of your grandchildren and society as a whole. In the end the “convenient” products don’t really give us more quality time, they just make us spend more money on disposable future landfill items. We’re being pushed to live faster and more activity-filled lives so that companies can sell us products that replace ways of working or ways of eating which are better and actually no less convenient, but made to seem like a waste of time and energy.
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Very well said, Blanchie.
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Blanchie, way to rock my world.
laff
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Check this link out,
http://www.frontstreetdental.ca/dentistry.html
This is my new friend Ali’s “project”. He is going to revolutionize dentistry and hopefully be a leader in changing the whole way medicine impacts our world. I would love to see if Dr Laslovboda would be interested in going as far as Ali did in reducing the footprint his place of work leaves behind.
Instead of building a new building, Dr Farahani retrofitted an old historic century home using only non-toxic building practices. He has no harsh chemicals and produces minimal waste in the day-to-day operation of his practice.
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I thought there would be more benefit to moving closer to where I work but when it came time to apply for an income tax break, you must move more than 40 km closer to work in order for it to account for anything substantial. So I was unable to claim all my moving expenses (including real estate and lawyer’s fees, etc.) because I only moved 35 km closer to where I work- as did my husband. Strange how it doesn’t matter that 2 people moved closer to where they both work and yet there is nothing to gain from this as an incentive from the government….
On another note, my husband and I are renovating our home in Ontario and we are looking to use environmentally friendly products to make our house much more efficient. This includes replacing all the windows with new ones as well as installing an instant water heater that only uses gas to heat the water when you require it to. It’s not much overall, but if everyone helped a little where they could, it could really amount to a great deal in the end.
I also teach in an “Eco-school” where we are trying to reduce the amount of waste that our school produces and our recycling program has really taken off. It’s nice to see young people making an effort to clean up the environment and reduce, reuse and recycle.
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I am looking at the on demand water system as a replacement for my water tank when it goes. (math says 2 years from now) The window replacement is fantastic way to save energy, and will pay for themselves in a few years. Australia has just banned the incandescent light bulb.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/world_first_aus.php
I have time of day usage heating (and electricity) in my house, half price after 11 pm and on weekends, so all laundry is done at night or weekend, the savings are amazing. My house is all electric since we have no natural gas out here (yet). I figure I am at half the rate of heating and lights as most of my neighbors.
There is a PDF file at this link: http://www.nspower.ca/customer_service/residential/home_heating_products/electric_thermal_storage/verification.shtml
I do drive a truck because work and other reasons, but did buy the most efficient 2 wheel drive I could get. Busses are not an option where I live. Neither is pedal biking it in the winter. (or Spring it seems this year . Brrrrr)
We try!
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I have to giggle at the fact of being hit by a car. It is a sure fire way to get environmentally friendly. AUTOCIDE! Still everyday i sit around and laugh at the fact automakers are fighting over profits lost because people are not wanting to kill the earth so fast.
Also, i think that people are just too lazy, and possibly just to vain to want to ride a bike anywhere. I can understand someone out in the middle of nowhere.. but in Toronto we have one of the best public transit systems in the world… so being a fat ass is no excuse. cut the carbs to kill greenhouse gas.