The ethical motorist

We already know that if we want to reduce our collective carbon footprint we basically shouldn’t be driving. But what if walking and biking just aren’t an option for you because you work downtown and live in the ‘burbs, or you don’t know how to ride a bike, or you’re chronically afraid of helmet hair? We discovered there are still a few ways to green your commute.

Green your car
If you absolutely must drive your car, there are a few ways you can make it more environmentally friendly. For one thing, you can roll down the windows in summer instead of running the AC, and kill the engine if you’re going to be idling for more than 10 seconds. Best of all, you can invest in a hybrid model, some of which can run for 20 years or more on the energy that a gas-guzzling SUV would burn through in its first couple of years.

Share your car
You can also make your car more energy-efficient by packing in a few more passengers. Several websites have popped up over the last few years to help commuters and travelers find other people who are headed the same way. Smart Commute Carpool Zone is particularly user-friendly, and you can even search for drivers or passengers who work at your organization so you can ride to work together — ideal if you don’t fancy sharing a car with a total stranger.

Alternatively, instead of sharing your own car, you can sign up to a service like Zipcar or Autoshare, which are designed for more frequent use than traditional rental agencies, but still intended for people who only occasionally need access to a car. The green element to all this is that if the car isn’t in your driveway all the time and if you have to pay each time you use it, you’ll be less tempted to drive it to work just because it’s there. In fact, Zipcar claims that each of their vehicles “takes 15-20 personally-owned vehicles off the road.”

Scrap your car
Public transit is even better than carpooling, although choosing the greenest form is not always straightforward. Planes, for example, are the biggest carbon offender, but as Slate’s Green Lantern columnist Jacob Leibenluft points out, part of the reason planes produce more than their fair share of CO2 is that they travel the longest distances. While plane are less energy-efficient than cars or trains, if you’re travelling to the other side of the country you’re going to produce a huge whack of carbon regardless of how you get there.

When it comes to deciding between the subway and streetcar, things get even more complicated. Franz Hartmann, Executive Director of Toronto Environmental Alliance, says that it’s challenging to compare the two because of the number of variables involved. “If you had a bus that had one person on it … and compared it to the subway which uses more energy but has 100 people on it, then obviously the bus is worse. But what happens when you have a bus that’s full, and a subway carrying only five people? Trying to spin it down and say, ‘This one is the best’ is really impossible.

“The simple answer,” he says, “is that public transit is much better than using your car. And walking or biking are best.”