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Should Buddhists drive cars?
I once read an amusing article on why Jesus would have ridden a bike had he been born in the 20/21st Century.
Probably the biggest threat to humanity is global warming, and for that reason I haven't learnt to drive. Fumes and CO2 omissions from cars cause suffering after all. Obviously, Buddha didn't have an opinion on driving but I guess most people here do and I'd be interested to hear them.
Probably the biggest threat to humanity is global warming, and for that reason I haven't learnt to drive. Fumes and CO2 omissions from cars cause suffering after all. Obviously, Buddha didn't have an opinion on driving but I guess most people here do and I'd be interested to hear them.
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Comments
A little food for thought... There's always 2 sides to every story
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3939
Driving; I believe, isn't something we should feel very guilty about.
but also, yeah buddhists should ride a bike instead of a car because bicycling is a more mindful and healthy activity regarfdless of environmental impacto
I'm always sceptical about such websites. Obviously, as with Buddhism, cause and effect is never as simple as just that.
There are too many people with vested interests in excess consumption......the case with the University of East Anglia being hacked is related. A theory is just that and its very difficult to prove beyond reasonable doubt.
There are nearly always two sides to every argument; however, most of the evidence on humanity being implicated, in part, to global warming is pretty convincing.
http://www.desmogblog.com/node/1272 Hmmmmmm
I like it especially in times of changing season and weather changes. You get to see the magic of weather happen in real-time and it's so much more personal. It's not like watching on a TV or from behind a glass where you watch at a distance. You feel everything.
Both sides are equally guilty of distorting truths to push their agenda. I just don't believe that you should feel very guilty about driving. Especially if you have a hybrid/electric/natural gas vehicle.
Should I not drive? Maybe, but is that realistic? Not the way western society has been built in the past century. I wish it were different, but we have to live the way things are.
The moment I can go off-grid and generate my own green power with little or no environmental impact, I'll be there. The moment I can drive a practical car that emits no greenhouse gasses (that I can charge using my green power), I'll buy it. Until then I'll keep doing what little bits I can do to lessen my impact on the earth. And I'll keep watching my neighbors driving their 12 mpg pickup trucks to the grocery store half a mile away.
On the other hand, I spent 12 years as a bicycle courier earlier in life cycling everywhere. I simply don't see it as an ethical issue whether one drives or not. Needless consumption, like all the housewives I see in F-150 trucks or SUVs is vulgar and wrong. Using an appropriate vehicle to get somewhere or to enjoy a scenic highway is not.
The bottom line is don't believe what you're told, just do your best to be your best. From my experience of walking nearly everywhere I often get yelled at from my car-driving companions which leads me to think, especially considering how different the picture was only thirty or forty years ago, that excessive dependence on cars leads to laziness and conceit which are serious problems that a person should spend more time conquering than unproven theories about the effects of the environment.
The topic reminds me very much of whether Buddhists ought to eat meat. The truth is, sometimes in today's world, like eating meat, it is impossible to avoid driving. Distance is a fact of the modern world and nobody should beat themselves up over it.
YouTube - George Carlin - Saving the Planet
To borrow a concept from Thich Nhat Hanh, people in oil-producing regions and people in countries with a heavy dependence on oil "inter-are". I've been to the Amazon region in Ecuador, which has been devastated by the oil companies. The local people now have to have drinking water flown in, they can no longer hunt and fish for their food, and have to buy food that's flown in, but most have no money, because they've been living outside the cash economy and subsisting sustainably off nature since time immemorial. They have no choice but to bathe in rivers saturated with petrochemicals, so there's a high rate of cancer. It's impossible to see the devastation and not be moved to lower one's petrochemical consumption (plastics, not just gasoline) to the extent possible. By avoiding car ownership, I not only save money that would otherwise be spent on gas, insurance, car purchase and maintenance, I can be confident in knowing that my day-to-day choices did virtually nothing to contribute to the first Gulf War, or to the devastation of ecosystems and human habitats like the Ecuadoran Amazon and the Niger Delta, to name just two. Our everyday activities can and do impact people living half a world away.
I recognize that many aren't able to make such a radical commitment as I have. For those with options to daily car driving, a middle way compromise is a viable alternative.
http://www.quotegarden.com/vegetarianism.html
The latest indications we have suggest that Einstein was vegetarian only for the last year or so of his life, though he appears to have supported the idea for many years before practising it himself.
"So I am living without fats, without meat, without fish, but am feeling quite well this way. It always seems to me that man was not born to be a carnivore."
Alice Calaprice, has released the latest edition of her collected and edited quotes by Albert Einstein entitled, "The New Quotable Einstein." Now there is a solid source for the quote, complete with a document number in the Einstein Archive.
"Although I have been prevented by outward circumstances from observing a strictly vegetarian diet, I have long been an adherent to the cause in principle. Besides agreeing with the aims of vegetarianism for aesthetic and moral reasons, it is my view that a vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind." Translation of letter to Hermann Huth, December 27, 1930. Einstein Archive 46-756
http://www.ivu.org/history/northam20a/einstein.html
A veteran USDA meat inspector from Texas describes what he has seen: "Cattle dragged and choked... knocking 'em four, five, ten times. Every now and then when they're stunned they come back to life, and they're up there agonizing. They're supposed to be re-stunned but sometimes they aren't and they'll go through the skinning process alive. I've worked in four large [slaughterhouses] and a bunch of small ones. They're all the same. If people were to see this, they'd probably feel really bad about it. But in a packing house everybody gets so used to it that it doesn't mean anything." ~Slaughterhouse 1997
If you can imagine it, I actually met someone recently who did not know that plastic comes from oil. I was so dumbfounded I didn't even know how to react. I suspect she's not the only one though. The amount of plastic in everything we use, eat, sit on, ride in, and everything else we do every single day is stupefying. And it all comes from oil, and it all has a huge impact on the planet, from the second the first drill goes into the ground to find the oil to the truck dumping it out in the landfill where it will be forever.
It's really something to think about.
As most people are from the USA here, I don't really understand the transport infra-structure that you must deal with.
Even over here, people find it unusual that I don't drive. Even in my current work contract, it says that I need a licence but I convinced them it wasn't a necessity. I am lucky to have an ethical supermarket within 20 miles so I don't need to use the major "less ethical" places. I buy not more than one piece of fruit/veg flown in from abroad......I like asparagus but much better to wait until the season when its a real treat rather than having stuff from Peru.
I believe that a large majority of people choose to use a car when there are reasonably practical alternatives. As Buddhists, I think its important to explore alternatives to using a car and not just justify its use by following the critical mass
I completely agree. I used to walk 2 miles to work and 2 miles back everyday even in snowstorms like finding0 ('cept not as far) for four years and I needed that time so much. I needed it in the morning to prepare my head for the day and I needed it at night to decompress. I loved that walk.
I think walking is one of the major things we miss out on in the modern world. The one thing that totally convinced me that the human body was made for walking, and long distance walking, was when I figured out how I could manage and even ease the back and leg pain (nerve and soft tissue damage) simply by walking. It was astounding the first time I realized I couldn't sit, I couldn't stand, and I couldn't even lie down, but I could walk. It's made all the difference for my poor old broken body.
But maybe it's just me because I've always walked a lot. I didn't need a driver's license when I was a teen because I had friends who drove and I lived in Montreal where you definitely don't need a car. I never felt like it was an inconvenience, even later in life. I didn't get my driver's license until I absolutely had to when I was 35. Living on the farm with the folks in the middle of nowhere and I was working in town. I had no other choice. I have to admit though that I did love driving, especially highway driving. The injury put an end to the driving and I do miss it sometimes so I can see how some people could get addicted to their cars. Luckily we live in town now so I can walk to my heart's content. It just seems to snap everything back into place both physically and psychologically. Most modern people, especially North Americans, are really missing out on something important and pretty great.
Hi Mountains,
This is so inspiring. You make me want to do more. A lot more. I've gotten lazy.
LOL!!
Unfortunately our infrastructure is set up to burn as much fuel as possible. Industrial/business areas are set up 20 miles from the residential areas. And not many places have decent public transit set up. Every morning and evening you have hundred of thousands to millions (depending on the size of the city) of people squeezing on the roads to drive that 20 miles in gridlock traffic. Bumper-to-bumper, stop-crawl-stop-crawl traffic, which is just terribly inefficient in terms of fuel consumption. And then we have huge distances between towns and cities and, again, pretty much no public transit between them.
But there's plenty of other conscious things you can do. Take a canvas shopping bag with you to the store. Don't buy bottled water, get a filter or just drink tap. I have milk and cheese that is made locally delivered to my house every week, they use a special kind of milk jug that can be cleaned and reused - so I never have to recycle milk jugs, and I'm not using dairy products that are trucked in from long distances.
Make energy efficient improvements to your home, like CFL light bulbs, weather stripping, new windows, programmable thermostats, better insulation, etc.
Just be conscious! This Planet is our mothership! And yes, I like to hug trees.
Speaking of energy-saving measures; hanging laundry out to dry rather than using a dryer (they guzzle electricity, often from coal-burning plants). That's not always realistic for families, but for single people and couples, it's practical. In the southwest of the US, the desert air is so dry, clothes actually dry faster hanging outside than in the dryer, even in winter.
But in regards to the car issue...driving is so culturally ingrained that the unfortunate reality is that the only way people are going to change is through government intervention. That is why it is so important to elect people into office that care about creating a greener economy. The only way automotive manufactures are going to be motivated to create fuel efficient cars and alternative fuel vehicles is if the government helps them with subsidies and tax breaks. You can't expect people to give up driving for good, so we need to make the vehicles less damaging on the environment.
Also we need more innovation in order to make the sorts of technologies cost competitive.
No I haven't. Good timing, I just finished "What's the Matter with Kansas". I will look for it.
All measures are needed, including making more efficient cars. I'm not sure I'd say that driving cars is "culturally ingrained", exactly. The country has been brainwashed by propaganda (advertising, mostly) that went hand-in-hand with the dismantling of the effective transit systems of yore, and that continues to convince people of "America's love affair with the car". People have swallowed that line to the point that they're convinced it's a cultural thing. But...maybe this is splitting hairs. The antidote is both conscious living and making more efficient cars. And designing cities so people can walk to their shopping rather than drive a long distance to a mall.
Yeah--Colorado!
I see what you mean, but I think it is a little bit of both. For instance, whenever a kid turns 16 its culturally accepted in most areas of the country that they get their drivers license. While its true not every kid will do this and some parents don't allow their kids to drive, I would still say that it is the cultural norm. In poor areas kids just don't get the opportunity to have a car in the first place.
But yea, there is plenty of brainwashing going on through television and advertisements. Hell I still remember watching "Dealing Dug" the used car salesman fly around on my TV in a superman outfit when I was like 5 years old. If thats not brainwashing I dunno what is. When I have kids I'm making sure they never watch commercials...at least not on my watch.
You're right; there is that teen fixation with driving. Maybe raising kids to be environmentally aware, they'll be more into bicycles. Believe it or not, some kids are like that.
RE: not allowing kids to watch commercials; Roko and Adrian Belic, a couple of indie filmmakers, said that when they were kids, their mom told them the TV was broken, and could only receive Public Television. So they grew up on PBS documentaries, and became filmmakers themselves. PBS is the only way to go, IMO.
I live in about the wettest place in the UK and I would never dream of such a thing!
Saying that, I smell a bit funny in the winter
Yes, but your smelling funny is for a good cause!
When I was a kid there was this local car dealer who would use his dog frequently in his advertisements and, from time to time, offer the dog's puppies to those who bought a car from him.