Picked up a fare (in my London taxi) to Buckhurst Hill in Essex on
Thursday night. Lady about 30 years old.

On the way she goes on about how we are polluting the planet and must do
something to stop greenhouse gases as we (the human race) are
responsible for Global Warming. I agree that we pollute the planet, that
the planet is getting warmer, but state that there is no absolute
certainty that GW is man made and that it *could* just be part of a
natural process.At this she goes on about how it *is* caused by us and
that everyone *must* do something or we will all suffer due to GW.

Then we get near her home. There is a fairly steep hill with lots of
speed humps in it to get to her turning. Then she says that she drives
along this road nearly every day. I ask her why she does this as it's
not too far to walk to the nearby station.

Her reply? "I walk to the station when I go to work but I use the car
when I go to the gym"

You could have blown me down with a feather! I asked why she couldn't
walk or cycle to the gym and her reply was "It's too dangerous to do
that around here" From the way she said that I inferred that she meant
there was a likelihood of being attached by muggers. This was possibly
more imaginary than real. However, this was her justification for using
a car to go to the gym - a non essential journey if ever there was one.

Seems that many people pay lip service to the idea of being less
polluting just as long as it doesn't interfere with their lifestyle !

For the record I'm quite happy to try to reduce my pollution by not
being an 'aggressive' driver, not accelerating too hard, and looking
ahead so that I don't have to brake too hard. It not only makes good
sense from a pollution point of view, it also makes economic sense as I
use less fuel and get greater mileage from my brake pads. My wife is
good at recycling most things from our family waste. Our personal
'carbon footprint' is getting less, but I believe that there is
currently too much emphasis on this and not enough on other aspects of
pollution, which may cause us more damage than any (natural) warming may
do.

I wait for the usual rant from Duhg but There must be some of you who
can put forward intelligent opinions.

--
Mike Hughes
A Taxi driver licensed for London and Brighton
at home in Tarring, West Sussex, England