There are alternatives to driving. For longer trips, we can take public transportation or carpool; for shorter errands, we can bike or walk. These alternatives are cheaper and help prevent global warming.

What You Should Know

• Carpooling saves you gas money and prevents carbon dioxide from being emitted, and it also leads to less wear and tear on your car--which means fewer maintenance costs.
• According to 2003 figures, the U.S. government plans to spent $175 billion on highway transportation, and only $4.2 billion on public transportation. Imagine how much faster, cleaner, safer, and far reaching our public transportation systems would be if those numbers were reversed!
• If just 500 people took public transportation to work one day a week instead of driving, they would prevent approximately 300 tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted each year.
• Commuting into a city by car costs from $2,500 to $6,000 a year for the permanent parking space, plus an additional $500 or so in gasoline costs. By contrast, taking a commuter train costs roughly $1,600 a year, while commuting on the bus or subway costs only $750 a year.

Easy Things You Can Do

Take public transportation. One full city bus means about 40 fewer cars on the road. The environmental benefits of public transportation are enormous, but there are personal benefits too: you won't have to pay for gasoline or parking, you won't have to drive in traffic jams, and you can read, get work done, listen to music, or even sleep during your commute. Check out http://www.511.org or http://www.commute.org to help you figure out how to get from point A to point B without having to drive yourself.

Carpool! Carpooling is fun (you get to be social before you start your workday), fast (the Carpool Only Lane lets you fly by everyone else), saves you gas money, time, and most important, takes CO2-emitting cars off the roads. Carpooling isn't just for commuters, either. You can carpool with other parents to take your kids to school, carpool with friends to go out to dinner, and more. Join the Peninsula Community carpool group on www.xxxxxxx.com (coming soon) to find carpool opportunities to get your kids to school or yourself to work, or join the wider local community to find carpool buddies for work or school.

Carshare. Carsharing allows you to enjoy the benefits of having your own car without having to foot the whole bill. For a monthly fee (typically around $35 or so, plus the gas you use) you can reserve a car, van, or SUV for four hours or four days, pick it up at a convenient location, drive it, and return it when you're done. If you currently own a car but drive fewer than 7,500 miles a year, joining a car-sharing network will save you money. Carsharing is catching on around the nation, which is great news: People who switch from owning their own cars to joining a car-sharing network usually reduce their total car-driving time by 50%. Talk about a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions!


Source: 51 Easy Ways You Can Prevent Global Warming (and save money!) by Jeffrey Langholz, Ph.D., and Kelly Turner