Growing up in England, with a Nebraskan mother, I have always imagined taking the great American Road Trip. This summer I finally had the opportunity to do such a trip, and returned just a week ago from a month on the road. The trip went from Savannah, diagonally across the U.S., culminating in British Columbia, then a straight shot down to New Mexico and across again home, with plentiful stops along the way in National Forests, friend’s homes and the occasional super-grotty motel.
For the return ride, we (my boyfriend and I) listened to the book on tape of Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded, and realised that even our ultra efficient, ultra low sulphur, diesel car, was still a blight on the world, -as we did Friedman’s math on how many pounds of carbon we were effectively dumping in our wake.
Catch 22 I guess. Stay at home, keep my horizons limited, and ride my bike, or hit the road, expand my world, and leave a hefty footprint. One day, soon I hope, we won’t have to make that choice, and experiencing the world, meeting people, seeing unrecognizable vistas, sleeping under the stars, and eating local fruits won’t have to occur at the expense of our climate and well being.
They (the wonderful, omnipresent, anonymous, they) will build the cars, the planes, find the fuels and the energy to make our living less damaging. But in the mean time, with doubting Thomas’s questioning the veracity of global warming, we will be held back, persisting with our damaging, outdated technologies, and letting us who do believe the “HYPE”, to feel bad that our green choices are limited by the technology available to us.
The book is great; more heartening and patriotic than one might think of a book that is decidedly tree-hugging. And the road trip was amazing, everything I could have hoped for, and a whole lot more. America’s an extraordinarily beautiful country, I hope our carelessness won’t go on to such an extent that we threaten that beauty permanently.
-Camilla
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