Your political
motives for helping improve air quality don't matter; you can
save money by
carpooling (even one day a week), biking, walking or taking transit to work. We
often hear people alleging this or that political agenda is responsible for the
push to improve
air quality. The combinations of alleged agendas are almost
endless and sometimes bewildering: liberal, progressive, conservative, neo
-conservative, libertarian, green; it all depends on whom you ask. All of that doesn't matter at the
practical and local/regional level. The fact is that you can
save money and
resources while you carpool, take transit, bike or walk to work. If you are
business oriented, the
savings represent extra funds to invest back into your
small or growing
business or an extra parking space freed up for a customer. If
you are a
non-profit the
savings represent extra funds to go toward your core
mission. For the individual, the
savings represent an extra investment to your
retirement account, a pizza on the weekend, a movie a week, extra contribution
to your child's 529 plan, or any number other alternative use of the money you
save. The bottom line is that helping the
environment can help you (
business,
non-profit or
individual)
save money, and that
savings can be applied to
whatever your personal preferences (or "political agenda") leads you to.
Savings are for all comers, we need not quibble over political motives.
My wife and I are big horror movie fans. I recently updated my NetFlix to include the second round of the Horrorfest flicks - 8 Films To Die For. We caught most of the original films that circulated around Halloween of 2006 (they were, on the whole, "meh"), and want to catch up on last year's selection.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, one of the films is called "Tooth and Nail." One synopsis of the movie goes:
A group of young people, called Foragers, fight to survive against a band of vicious cannibals, known as Rovers, in a post-apocalyptic world which has been depleted of fossil fuels.
The voiceover from the trailer puts it like this:
We never saw it coming, that's for sure. It wasn't nuclear war or a deadly virus. Or a comet crashing into the planet. It wasn't overpopulation, or global warming. We simply ran out of gas.
Apparently, running out of gas is the stuff of post-apocalyptic nightmares. In the future, I guess, everyone forgets how to ride a bicycle.