"Mike Hughes" wrote in message
...
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.

You make good points, especially about the hypocritical passenger.