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The
most horrifying thing for me as a teenager was
realizing that my mother was right. It was true
just a little bit too often for my taste. But
decades into adulthood, mom is still right about
personal responsibility and making a
difference.
When
you left a room in our home, the lights would go
off. Things that could be used again were not
discarded. My mother embraced recycling of
glass and newspaper when it still involved
driving to an industrial site. She and Dad made
cars last a decade or longer.
The
cars, even driving on the winter-salted roads
back East, owed much of their long lives to
carpooling. My mother could make a social event
of every chore. Taking the kids to the park?
She would pick up a friend and her children, and
it would be a visit. Going to a meeting? The
carpool would scoop you up, and the group drove
off. Shopping for groceries? Again, it was
always better with a friend. Why drive alone,
placing two cars on the road, when driving
together could be a party?
What
difference does just one person’s carpooling
mean? It can nearly cut in half the gasoline
expense of the trip. It can improve traffic by
taking one or more cars off the streets. Fewer
car trips means less wear and tear on roadways.
If two carpools replace six cars, that means
four car trips’ worth of gasoline not burned,
transported, imported, or drawn from the ground
as crude oil. If five carpools replace twelve
single-driver cars, and they do for a work week,
that reduces seven cars times ten one-way trips,
or seventy cars off the road. If that occurs in
five neighborhoods, that could mean fewer waits
at each light, fewer trips to refill the gas
tank, and more social interaction to strengthen
the connections between neighbors who drive
together.
It adds
up.
This is
not what the eternal teenager inside me wants to
hear. But having teenagers of my own makes me
acutely aware that we all need to grow up and
listen to mom a little more. The world I want
to leave them can’t be one that indifference and
lack of personal responsibility has ruined. I
don’t want the globe overheated to the point
where Phoenix is way beyond hot.
We each contribute
a tiny bit to the masses of hydrocarbons in the
air by burning fossil fuels for the energy we
use. Just as we contribute hydrocarbons one day
at a time, each choice we make as individuals to
consume less necessarily will make that carbon
footprint just a smidge smaller. One person
cannot change everything, not even my mother.
But if she keeps doing what she does, and all
her friends, and you and your family and our
friends and I choose to follow her good example
as an energy consumer and driver, we can make a
measurable difference in our corner of the
world.
Mom
would be so happy.
Judy Schaffert
Supreme Court
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