Do You Really Like Your Car?

It has been a while since I wrote last. Like many of us, I’ve been busy trying to stay afloat during the phenomenon we all have come to know and cherish as the Global Economic Crisis. The good side of the crisis in my personal life is that the lack of orders and new projects – I work with international commerce – leaves me a little extra time to partake in more idealistic activities.

Yesterday, during a conference with representatives from a few prominent NGO’s and associates of Mr. Jim Garrison, I was exposed for the first time to the certainty that global warming will influence our daily lives as of 2015 and to the palpable possibility that we will all face famine and water shortage by 2100. There is no mistake about it; the scientific community has presented conclusive evidence to this effect. Truth be said, I should not have been so surprised as this theme is present in the back of all our minds for decades. I remember having seen Carl Sagan talk about it on TV during the 1980’s in his series “Cosmos”. Yet, we – as a species – have done next to nothing to work towards the prevention or at least the minimisation of the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It simply isn’t “economically interesting”.

Of course some of us do a little here and there to help and to feel good about ourselves, and this is where I include myself so I know what I’m talking about. We recycle, abdicate from our cars once or twice a month – maybe share one “green” car between husband and wife, take short showers, turn off the lights when no one is using the room, buy the occasional “green” product and watch cultural programmes about ecology on the tele so we can talk intelligently about the subject. This is all commendable, but it frankly isn’t enough! Nevertheless, the sad truth is that we, as individuals, can do very little beyond incorporating sustainability and preservation into our habits.

There are certain individuals who are catalysers for the type of change we need, and these include politicians, industrialists, bankers and a lot of such notable people around the world, who detain the power to effect the change with the necessary expedience. Unfortunately, they are also much more concerned with their own priorities and will not act unless we, as a group, tell them that they must. Greed, self preservation and self promotion all take precedence over taking courageous action to prevent the worst and most immediate crisis in the history of Mankind: Global Warming.

Yesterday’s conference was aimed at making preparations for the State of the World Forum (http://www.worldforum.org/state-2009.htm). The World Forum itself is an entity created by Mikail Gorbachev and Jim Garrison to prompt global leaders and influential individual to act in the creation of creative solutions to critical global challenges. While Jim Garrison himself was in a meeting with President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva in Brasilia, we were in Sao Paulo – one of the largest and most populated cities in the world – discussing global warming at an abnormal 34ºC weather. We could see through our open window to the outside the perpetual cloud of brownish-grey carbon dioxide that hovers over the commercial and industrial heart of Brazil; a by-product of the city’s primary mode of transportation.

The problem is, we’ve been telling people to own cars for 50 years. We told ourselves that we need them and that they make us more important and happier. Now, it has become difficult to reverse that process, but it is paramount that we do. Ministries and regulatory bodies around the world should tell individuals of the consequences of utilising an automobile on a daily basis. Governments should work towards making automobiles unnecessary by providing quality public transportation that’s based on an energy matrix different than fossil fuel. We, as civil individuals, should realise and press for these changes in our habits lest we are forced to change much more than that by the effects of global warming. This is something we, as individuals, can do. We can get together to change this one thing common to every nation on the globe. We can unite, as a species, to do away with the petrol era and replace it with a different model. The current economic crisis has affected the automotive industry very gravely and it will have to rethink itself and rebuild its foundations. Perhaps now is the time for that change.