ARE YOU SAYING NO TO DRIVING A CAR?
G.E.T. wants your story!
In our next issue we’ll peer into the lives of real people who are learning to live without the everyday use of a car. How they do it. How well it works. What would make life easier. What needs to change in our society to make fossil free transportation a more livable option.
We know (from experience) that it’s not easy to live without the convenience of using a car everyday so we’re eager to share your story.
If you’ve got a story to tell or some useful info to share about the joys and struggles of not driving – drop a post here, or send an email directly to David@greenenergytimes.org.
Hi David and Nancy-Rae, I’ve been thinking/praying/meditating on the goal of being able to bike/walk to work for many years and it always seemed nearly impossible, especially living in rural Vt. BUT eventually that intention paid off and I found a great job at One Percent for the Planet with my office being less than half a mile from my house.
I now bike/walk to work almost every day, doing my local shopping/etc on the way home (along with jumping in the Mad River on hot days). Aside from that my family is getting at least 75% of our food from local farms and we’re doing some work on the side with a few local farmers in exchange for food. AND we’re getting 90% of all of our heating-fuel from local forests, mostly from trees on our land as we’re making room for more gardens.
We’re now saving at least $3000/year from no more car-commuting to work, we’re also saving about $2500/year by using local firewood instead of propane. Our move to local-food does cost us about $2000 more per year compared to the subsidized factory-farm-Monsanto-supermarket-chain options, BUT since we’re saving more than $5,000/year on energy we’re still way ahead of the game.
On top of all this, we’re HEALTHY from this lifestyle, so we don’t even both to spend a dime on health insurance, which saves us more than $10,000 per year.
Thanks for helping share these stories.
Cheers,
Gaelan Brown, http://www.OnePercentforthePlanet.org and http://www.CompostPower.org
Galen, Thanks for posting this replay, and sharing all the good info. You’re definitely doing your part here, and I look forward to putting all this together for the next issue. Stay tuned,