On Bicycling and Saving the World

 

 

The other day I drove my car when I didn’t have to.  I wanted to join some friends on a bike ride that began and ended about 10 miles from my house.  I could have ridden to the start, ridden 33 miles with the group, and then pedaled the 10 miles back home.  (I’ve done that plenty of times before!)  Instead, I contributed to the climate catastrophe that is already upon us, by burning fossil fuels.

 

My primary reason for riding my bicycles is because it’s fun!  My second motivation is ecological.  I began riding a bicycle as a way of life in 1970, on the first Earth Day.  That’s when I started riding my Schwinn Typhoon to school every day.  (Today we would call that a “single speed”; back then we called it a “bicycle.”  The coolest kids back then, who rode multiple-geared bikes, road Raleigh three-speeds.)

 

Bicycling as a way of life, with environmentalism as motivation, has influenced my living arrangements through adulthood.  I served four churches over 40 years of active ministry.  In all four cases, we chose a house with easy bicycle commuting distance from the church building.  One reason for staying in Williamsburg in retirement is that I can run most of my errands and fulfill my volunteer responsibilities without burning fossil fuel.  My car sits in the garage for days at a time.

 

The most recent climate report from the United Nations is terrifying.  Unless we dramatically reduce fossil fuel emissions today, the earth will pass a no-return threshold of warming during my lifetime.  Am I saving the world through my bicycling?  Or do an individual’s acts make any difference?

 

Elizabeth Stice’s article in the current issue of Comment: Public Theology for the Common Good provokes these thoughts and questions.  In “Why Wait?  Help For Ordinary People Who Feel Helpless,” she points out that most of us “believe that we are not very responsible for change if we are not very powerful.”  And so, most of us are worried, but believe we can only wait and hope that those with political power will do big things to avoid climate catastrophe.  But, she writes, “Those who think our culture can be changed only by those with obvious power should consider an alternative philosophical perspective.”  She references Vaclav Havel, the future president of Czechoslovakia, who began his activism as a private citizen in the 1970s, when his nation was behind the Iron Curtain.

 

Instead of waiting for a large movement or political program, ”Havel suggested that a dissident was anyone ‘living in the truth’ – who refused to accept ideology over reality and who pursued the aims of life rather than the aims of the system….Living in the truth might never translate into a political program; it would be contingent and diverse and, primarily, ,human.  It was about pursuing a better life.  That better life might lead to a changed political system, but it wouldn’t come about by political change.”

 

Havel “wanted a moral transformation of society, a ‘rehabilitation of values like trust, openness, responsibility, solidarity, love.’  People should simply make a better life right where they were.  They should do a good job at work, be good to their neighbors, choose reality over ideology, and take responsibility for their own actions and environment.”

 

“We are not passive victims of our society; we are participants in it….Our responsibilities may vary, but responsibility itself persists everywhere.  And responsibility – not power – is the root of change, in ourselves and in society.”

 

I wonder how far my responsibility extends.  I wonder about my actions of responsibility.  This is where we enter into the great gray area, it seems to me.

 

For instance, I still drive a gasoline-burning car.  But it gets 37 miles per gallon in combination city-highway driving.  Is that responsible enough?  Would I be more responsible if I was driving an electric car?  But most of the electricity available for recharging an EV’s battery is generated by burning fossil fuels.  So, are EVs anything more than interim technology at this point?

 

I don’t use fertilizers or weed killers on my lawn (because they are so ecologically damaging), and I don’t water it (because I worry about future water supplies), so I don’t have to cut the grass often.  But when I do, I use a gasoline-powered lawn mower.  And, in an hour, that lawn mower spews more pollutants into the air than my car does when I drive to Richmond.  Should I use a 50s-era push mower instead?

 

And how do intangibles, such as friendship, such as community, such as joy figure in all of this?  They’re awfully important, aren’t they?  Because of those needs, a few days ago, I drove my car when I didn’t need to, to get to a bike ride.

 

What are your thoughts?

 

Andy Ballentine