Beep
beep! No, that’s not my green conscience reminding me to stick to my
principles; that’s a real life, gas-guzzling, carbon-emitting, money-burning
car parked in my driveway. After 12 years of coping perfectly well without
owning any motorised form of transport (apart from a couple of boats), I’ve
finally succumbed and bought a car – not just any car, mind, but a largish
family estate. And the worrying thing is, I actually feel quite excited about
it.
How did
it come to this? I used to own cars, in the dim and distant past when I had a
young family and was doing a lot of DIY. Then I divorced, and my ex-wife kept the
car. My subsequent car-less status wasn’t exactly an active decision to get rid
of the dreaded beast; more a passive decision not to buy a replacement. And it
may have had as much to do with my persistent state of poverty as any
over-riding green principle, I can’t exactly remember.
That
said, there’s no doubt in my mind that cars are a major part of The Problem.
Living in the south-east corner of England – which is so over-vehicled that it
feels as if we are already in gridlock – it’s hard not to think the world would
be a far more pleasant place if they didn’t exist. By not owning a car, I could
assume some degree of detachment from the UK’s rampant consumer culture – not
exactly the moral high ground, but certainly a small hillock of superiority.
My
position was admittedly made easier by sharing a house with someone who ran a
car-share scheme and, later, by joining the hugely successful City Car Club in
Brighton. If I needed to, I could always hire a car for £5-6 per hour. It was
easy, efficient – and kept me locked into the car culture. Who knows what might
have happened had I not had that option. I might have got my bike properly
kitted out, or bought a horse – or, more likely, bought another car that much
sooner. The combustion engine is a hard habit to break.
Then I
had more children – two more babies and a step-daughter, to be precise. At first,
my partner and I carried on with the car club option, heroically putting up
with the inevitable drawbacks: booking in advance, locating the nearest
available vehicle, fitting car seats, getting back before we incurred a fine,
unfitting car seats, returning vehicle, etc, etc. When our second child was
born, however, sleep deprivation kicked in and this interminable to-ing and
fro-ing lost its appeal. Travelling on buses and trains with two fractious
toddlers was an exhausting ordeal. Even walking to the beach became a chore,
especially as it was all uphill on the way back. We went out less and less, and
instead contented ourselves with visiting the nearby park most days of the week.
And so
the idea of buying a car was born. We soon found many worthy, even altruistic,
reasons why owning one would be a good thing. We would nip down to the seafront
of a summer’s evening and have a barbecue on the beach. We would take the
children on country walks more often and get them more attuned to nature. We would
take them to the big swimming pool nearby, so much nicer than our tiny local
one, and teach them to swim. And we would visit my parents in France more often,
without having to pay the usual exorbitant air fares and car rental fees.
We always
intended to buy the smallest, most economical car possible. But with two
children under three and a teenager to squeeze in, the criteria soon changed to
the smallest, most economical estate car possible. Then we saw a proper family
estate with three proper seats in the back, seemingly in mint condition and the
same price as the rest. Faster than you could say ‘greenhouse gases’, we bought
it.
And so
the big red beast sits in our drive. It turns out it’s not the worse
gas-guzzler in the world, giving 36-40 miles per gallon, and it will
comfortably fit a family of five plus camping gear. I still haven’t worked out
which is ‘greener’, flying to France or going by car, but I know which is
cheaper and which will allow my elderly parents to see their grandchildren more
often. And, who knows, maybe we
will forsake that holiday to Corfu and drive to the Westcountry instead. That
should save a few trees.
