I feel like there is a trap that many people who work in the environment community fall into, wherein you look at your job as an offset. You take a meal in Styrofoam back to your desk or forget to grab a canvas bag on the way to grocery store, and you respond to that tinge of guilt with, "It's okay, I work for the environment." Its an unhealthy attitude that I am sad to say I have fallen prey to more than once and I am the first to admit that I have no right asking anyone to do anything that I am not willing to do myself. So, as part of my commitment for Lent, I have volunteered to "walk the talk" by engaging in a "carbon fast." During each week in Lent, there will be a post by a different Iowa IPL staff member, director, or supporter discussing their efforts to reduce their carbon footprint. This post is about my first week taking the bus to work in Lent.Monday was my first day on the bus. As I stepped outside, my first thought was that Lent should really begin in spring. While the bus stop is not far from my house, it was 13 degrees and the wind chill was pushing the temperature below 0. I felt like a newbie when I noticed that I was one of the few on the bus without a thermos in hand. As I took my seat I imagined that they had more than coffee in their mugs in order to survive one of the harshest winters on record in Iowa.
While this beginning sounds like anything but a ringing endorsement of bus travel, my feelings took a turn for the better once my fingers dethawed. As the bus slowly made its way to downtown Des Moines, I was able to read some news stories and take care of some quick emails on my Blackberry. The advantages of being able to read and work as I traveled easily offset the 15 minutes that I "lost" by not driving myself to work. I can only imagine Sarah’s surprise at seeing me respond to an email before 10 AM, let alone before 8 AM. As my co-worker, she knows better than most that I love mornings as much as I love free form jazz and losing at volleyball.
I should mention the economic benefits of bus travel. The friendly folks at DART can, and are eager to make a strong case for cost savings. In fact, their website prominently features a "savings calculator" that measures the cost of bus travel against the cost of driving your car to work. The current IRS reimbursement standard for travel is $0.50 per mile. This figure takes into account not only the cost of gas, but also the theoretical depreciation and maintenance of my 2001 Chevy Malibu. Every day, I travel 13 lucky miles round-trip to the office. If I were reimbursed for this travel, I would receive $6.50 per day. And when you factor in the monthly cost of a parking space ($4.07/workday), between Iowa IPL and me, we are footing a bill of $10.57 per day to get me to work. This may not sound like much, but this amounts to a staggering $2,642.50 per year. Assuming that I use monthly bus passes at $42 per month, Iowa IPL and I could theoretically save $2,138.50 in 2010 by placing me on a bus. Having confirmed these numbers by running the math myself on Excel, I must confess that Dart is making a pretty compelling argument for bus travel.
Of course, this is a carbon blog not a financial advice column. The real goal of this effort is to reduce my carbon footprint. Using the handy dandy Cool Congregations Carbon Calculator (shameless plug), I discovered that taking the bus to work every day instead of driving would prevent the release of 3,405 pounds of carbon. To put that into perspective, this is equivalent cutting the annual travel of the average American by over a fourth. You could argue that I should take into account the fact that the bus still emits carbon, but the bus goes from my neighborhood to downtown whether or not I am on it. This is a subtle reminder that I am not the center of the universe.
And that is the biggest challenge of my Lenten experience. Since I no longer control the exact moment when I leave my home, by taking the bus I surrender some freedom. In many ways, the car is a symbol of freedom, allowing each of us to come and go as we please. But, as so many of us have learned, freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (that sentence taken out of context could easily ruin a political career). I would love to be a person of great self-discipline, but as I approach the age of 30 I am coming to terms with the fact that I am not that person. Having no set time to get to the office has so often been an invitation, especially in the cold and darkness of winter, to linger beneath the sheets. And those extended mornings are paid for in hours of work on evenings and weekends. What I am finding through this experiment is that taking the bus might not just make me a more efficient traveler, it might make me a more efficient and healthier person.
So I guess I have failed in achieving the aim of Lent. What was supposed to be a “sacrifice” ends up being to my personal and professional benefit. But I think that is one of the problems with how we look at cutting our carbon footprint. What seems like a chore is so often better for us in the long run. Last year I appeared on a religious radio show where the host attempted to summarize my household reduction suggestions as “sacrifices.” If you listened very closely to the show I swear you can hear me squirming in my chair. At first I thought my resistance to the term was because "sacrifice" makes for a poor marketing campaign. Upon further reflection, I realized that I disliked the word because I don’t think it accurately captures the mission of our organization. After all, we don’t call it “sacrifice” when we give to other countries in the wake of natural disasters, nor do we "sacrifice" blood when we donate it for the sake of others. In the same way, the steps we take to reduce our carbon footprints are about giving. When we act to prevent climate change we are ultimately giving to our ourselves, our children, and to people across the world whom we will never meet.
Tim Fink is the Executive Director of Iowa IPL. He can be contacted at director@iowaipl.org.
Next week board member Bill Cox will be talking about his efforts to insulate his basement during Lent.
