Change the World Wednesday – 20th June

Oh poo!

I wait all week to participate and this week I can’t because I meet the challenge everyday. I don’t have the ‘convenience of a car.

I have added a second link to the verdurette idea.

Cold snap again today, I had to work early this morning and now I am feeling stuffed up again. I hope it passes, and doesn’t lay me up like last week.

This is the first image I saw on Google; this is NOT coffee, this is weasel wee.

I have been following some of the reports and events at the Rio +20 Summit, and I am not at all hopeful. I hope to have a rant on this tomorrow, it’s partially written, with luck I will get the impetus to finish. Freshly brewed coffee in the morning helps, in fact it’s essential.

Look at that insipid watery stuff, it looks terrible.

Decent Brazilian coffee is almost syrup-like, it curls your chest hairs, and makes you do stupid things faster.

Change the World Wednesday, this week is about, um, NOT driving…

This week we’re going to track the driving trips which WE DON’T TAKE. Yep … for every time that you walk, ride a bike or simply choose not to make a trip, keep track of it.

See what I mean, I can’t do it specifically, because for me it’s everyday. Besides, I spend most of my day here sitting on my chuff entertaining you lot. It’s hard work.

But I can comment. In the halcyon days of my youth, I had a car, I had several, but from the moment I got my driver’s license, I had a car. The old saying, have car – will drive; and I did everywhere. Walk to the shops, are you out of your mind? I’d no more walk to the shops than fly to the moon.

But then in those days, we didn’t have the same global awareness as we do today, and gas was a lot cheaper.

Cars became an addiction, we couldn’t do without a car. From the moment our pimples cleared up and girls began to flirt, the car became the very centre of our universe and that has never changed. Even after marriage 2.x kids, the car was the most important thing apart from the house. We became immersed in the belief that you can’t live without a car.

Vehicles like this are either going to be banned or be taxed out of existance

We need to change that. They say peak oil has already been reached, which means higher prices and riskier methods (fracking) to get more. Some of the info I read on the various web sites paints a pretty dim future. It was considered a crisis when oil reached $100 a barrel, now that’s standard and there are forecasts of $200 before the years out.

Now it doesn’t matter if you are driving a Prius or whether you have an SUV, either way you’re going to be in the poo, one deeper than the other.

So the need to drive less is not just important from pollution, global warming point of view, but also financially. You’d better get used to it; because those days have gone, they are not returning.

So for car owners, I think the challenge is very important. I honestly don’t now how I would have fared.

I have two neighbours here, who live less than 200 metres from the botequim, and they drive there. Then there are others who live further and they walk. There is another guy who lives even closer, and he bikes to the bar… 50 metres across the praça, and he bikes! At least that’s a bike.

Good luck to all those participating.