It might not be a sin to be zealous. But I have to admit I have a sometimes-unfortunate habit of over-doing things. I offer this as a health warning to anyone planning to read beyond this point.
Perhaps it’s nothing to be proud of and fear not: I am not on any kind of a crusade to rid the world of taxis. But I have nevertheless managed to go a whole year now without seeing the inside of a cab and it has definitely improved the quality of life.
Why would I rather wait for buses, trains or travelled by bike or on foot than jump into the nearest cab?
It’s purely a CO2 thing. I don’t have anything personal against cab drivers — they’re just trying to earn a living. And, in all honesty, the amount of CO2 a taxi produces is pretty insignificant compared to a coal-burning power plant.
It’s also not a “being cheap” thing with me (even if I am cheap) or a “save-the-company-money” thing. It was simply a personal choice I made a year ago on one cold and rainy night. I had the option of taking a cab home for a 5-km ride or waiting 40 minutes for the last train. After weighing the pros (saving 10 euros and maybe as much as 2 kg of CO) vs the cons (waiting in a drafty, dimly lit train station), I decided to wait. The 40 minutes flew by and by the time I got home I had a strange but good feeling about it all: 2 kg of CO2 saved is 2 kg of CO2.
Since then, I’ve walked past waiting taxis to take public transportation on scores of work assignments and private journeys. Even on out-of-town trips I’ve learned that with a little bit of planning I can usually walk or take public transportation to where I need to be with only slight, if any, inconvenience. I walked six kilometres through south Duesseldorf the other day on a wonderful head-clearing stroll along the Rhine River to get to one assignment and the only drawback was getting up an hour early. But it was worth it: I saved CO2 and got some exercise in the process. If you’re a zealot about CO2, avoiding taxis has plenty of pleasant side-effects.
Admittedly, it’s sometimes a bit of a pain lugging luggage on crowded trains or buses to and from airports or central rail stations. But, so far, it’s always been do-able. It might take a bit longer and it’s certainly less comfortable when you’re stuck standing in a crowded airport bus. But it always feels good to know you’re cutting a few kg of CO2.
What difference does it all make? Probably almost none. I reckon I might have saved about 100 kg of CO2 in the last year (and “lost” maybe 25 to 50 hours in the process) by shunning taxis. But then again, I sometimes daydream about 10 or 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 people….or maybe even 1,000,000 or 1,000,000,000 people turning into cab-avoiding zealots like me and abandoning taxis altogether. That probably won’t save the world. But it would save the world a lot of CO2.
And it could make a small difference, couldn’t it?
