Blog Action Day: Climate Change and Me

Today is Blog Action Day, and this year’s theme is climate change. That’s, ahem, often a hot topic. Many people still don’t believe it’s real, and others believe we don’t really need to do anything about it. Or they don’t want to do anything about it. Or they don’t know what to do about it.

Personally, I think the most important thing we can do to diminish climate change is to get out of our gas-powered automobiles. And that’s just what I’ve been working on over the past year, but with a little extra push these last two weeks. I’ve been trying to use my bike (or my feet) for everything within two miles of home, and have been mostly successful. For instance, yesterday on my way home from work, I stopped at the grocery store, and cycled home with two full bags of groceries and two gallons of milk.

And right now, I’m downtown at a Portland WordPress User Group meeting, which is more than two miles from home, but I rode light rail down, so I’m still out of my car.  Unfortunately, I had to leave my bike behind at work in order to get here — my Xtracycle is too big to take on light rail. So tomorrow morning, I’ll make my way to work by bus.

Going car-lite isn’t easy. You have to deal with the weather, tiredness, and lots of inconveniences. And I don’t always have a good attitude about it.

But I’ve shared plenty about my bicycling habits. If you’ve been here before, you’ve seen it.  So what would change your mind? What would really get you to stop using your car, even for one or two days per week? Or for errands within a certain area? How can we make it happen?