Carectomy - Removing Cars from People

How To Drive Less: Small Steps To a Complete Carectomy

No one expects you to change overnight. For many of us, going completely car-free is a lifestyle change on the scale of switching from big city living to farming in the boondocks; from bone-crunching carnivore to raw vegan; from sinner to saint. It’s major, and best to begin your transformation by taking baby steps.

Here’s [...]

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Pimp Your Pet’s Ride

There’s a short but stubborn list of excuses that keeps me from turning totally car-free. The foremost reason? I have a dog. (I know, lame!) I also live in a city that’s sick with sprawl and addicted to its gnarly freeways. The public transit here is bogus: urine-soaked buses that go nowhere useful and aren’t [...]

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City Dwellers Pollute Less

Although most of the planet’s man-made greenhouse gas contributions come from cities, that statistic is deceptive – the majority of the Earth’s population live in urban settings. Per capita, the emissions of city dwellers is much lower than those living in more rural settings.
According to a recent study by the Brookings Institute focused on 2005 [...]

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School Principal Refuses Bike Rack, Students Protest

Sloth isn’t the sole reason kids aren’t riding their bikes to school. At Bridgewater-Raritan High School in New Jersey, student members of the school’s environmental club raised $2,000 and, with it, offered to buy the school a bike rack.
Principal James Riccobono refused the students’ gift, citing safety concerns. The road to the school, he [...]

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For Car-Free Family, Biking Replaces Bad Habits

"Do we really have to have a car?"
It’s a question many households ponder, but seldom explore. It’s the very question Erick Cave posed to his wife, Jess, as he drove their sputtering Volvo toward a SoCal freeway, before they went car-free.
The family of three didn’t meet the stereotypical symptoms that lead many to undergo [...]

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Could Less Money Make Us More Green?

Is a faltering economy good for the environment? If rising gas prices aren’t a sure enough sign that we need to change our ways, a recession may be just what Americans need to reduce waste, stop driving, and wake up to impending ecological crises.

Outside writer Elizabeth Hightower posits this possibility in the June issue of [...]

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Americans Skip Summer Road Trips

Americans are making fewer summer trips by car and driving fewer miles for the first time in decades. Summer driving has dropped steadily every year, according to AAA, and the Transportation Department reported last week that in March of 2008, U.S. drivers logged 11 billion fewer miles than in March of 2007, a 4.3% decline. [...]

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Huge Hybrids: Hallelujah?

General Motors and Chrysler are taking the nation’s concerns over rising gas prices and the environment to heart by offering a hybrid option in their biggest SUVs. The companies’ 5,500-pound eight-seater SUVs can now come with big hybrid badges, a slightly less obnoxiously consumptive engine, and a significantly higher price tag.
G.M.’s four-wheel drive Tahoe hybrid [...]

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Truck Sales Sink with American Economy

As gas prices rise, business is down for American automakers. Sales of the most notorious gas-guzzlers, like pickups and S.U.V.s, have fallen significantly, reports Ford. In 2007, pickups accounted for 14 percent of sales to the U.S. market. Presently, they represent a mere nine percent.
Following a brash promise that they’d deliver a full-year profit for [...]

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Pedestrian Safety Hits The Silver Screen

With few exceptions, television is almost as ubiquitous and deadening as driving a car. One program, however, has my seal of approval. The show, Perils for Pedestrians, is a monthly series trying to spread the good word for pedestrians and make drivers more aware of their presence on the roads.
Hosted by resident expert [...]

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