I hate driving!
Let’s look at this modern fashion life: People drive their car to work, to eat, to travel, or to do whatever. The energy saved and the joy obtained actually return back onto their bodies as fat, which in order to get rid of they go to gym, to hike, to diet, or to do whatever. All these energy in the form of gas, sweat, worry, or whatever is just wasted as carbon footprint. I’d like to say these kinds of fashions are doomed to end someday in the future.
In my opinion, the solution to the energy-saving/efficient lift style for the future consists of three Rs:
the worst: Recycling, which gives consumer good feeling about themselves but actually recycling costs energy.
the better: Reusing, which here means differently from recycling: use something again and again without bothering to recycle. I remember in my hometown those old wooden furnitures like stools and tables are used by peasants generations after generations and looks even better because of the wearing-caused furnishing and their stories embed.
the best: Reduction, which means to use less whenever you can. This is something to do with a high-profile personality. There is always a equilibrium between saving and creation. When the resources are rich, it shifts to exploration. However, high-tech society overdoes it and causes the world today to become a resource-determining market. Thrifty deserves more advocate than exploration. Our desire need to be converged as already told by Buddhists and Taoists: Enough is as good as a feast; Happy is he who is content.
Cheers for the new life style!