Why I try to be green but still drive a car...

Recently, I met an old church friend at a wedding that I haven't seen in ages and he remarked to me he still remembered a story I wrote - all those months ago - about reducing one's carbon footprint, by making some little changes to one's daily life.

I told him my interest in the environment was a fairly recent thing and after some light bantering, and he asked me how that was going, I told the group of friends present I now drive very slowly to assauge my guilt of driving a car. We all laughed.

Then, lately, jokes aside, random criticisms about the fact I drive a car - or in general, criticism about people in environment-related industries who do drive - keeps surfacing at various occasions that now I finally feel I have the need to write what I really feel about the whole issue, no doubt something that recent environment converts must struggle to deal with to a certain extent.

First off, I've never professed to be an environmentalist - or an activist for that matter. I am painfully aware of the limitations of my green credentials. Though I do admit when I first was converted into the green cause, my over-zealousness and enthusiasm for my new found "religion" did cause me to - at several occasions - proclaim quite loudly my disgust for the way certain people around me lived: the obvious selfishness, blatant materialism and I-don't-care-about-the-world-so-what kind of people.

I have since learned to keep my thoughts to myself. And I certainly don't preach, save nagging at my brother for leaving his computer on 24/7 365 days of the year.

Before this year - I think the awareness happened somewhere around February or March - I frankly never really gave the environment much thought. But covering the topic, and meeting the people who care regularly on my jobs, have greatly inspired me to change some bits of my life. I won't go into how I've changed my lifestyle, there's no better person to judge my actions than myself, and I recognise the limitations of what I can do.

So on the issue of cars - and it is a point of contention for many - or my car specifically, I only defence was that I got it last year, at a time where I didn't care very much for my footprint and was none the wiser for the guilt it'll later cause me.

The next idea I'm trying to articulate is a little difficult to explain. Let me borrow NUS's Assoc Prof Lee's words: he told me in an interview before, it's very hard to get people to care about the environment, if it means sacrificing their present way of life. The only way, to achieve mass awareness, or results, is really devising ways - using technology and what-nots - that people can continue to live their lives at current comfort levels, but in a manner that is still sustainable.

The point is I don't think it's a realistic expectation for people to think that if someone cares for the environment, he or she has to live like a hippie in a makeshift caravan, wear tatty clothes and live miserably. It's never going to be possible, and there will never be enough people who will be convinced. The world's best bet is finding ways to support a certain comfort level that man has achieved, while doing it in a sustainable way. Humans are after all, humans. After fighting for progress and technological discoveries to make our life more convenient, it is not realistic to expect humankind to revert to the old horse-drawn carriage days of yore.

The world will not give up its cars. But hybrid vehicles, cars that run on fuel cells, biofuels etc, can go some way in reducing that footprint and in a decade's time, these vehicles will be the norm. Technology will help us to live sustainably, cities of the future - like the eco-city in Tianjin - will be built in a fashion that does away with the need to drive in the first place.

So for people like me, who live in a non-eco-city and out in the sticks, and whom if without a car, would take one and a half hours to get to work on the bus, it now becomes a toss-up between making a great big loss on a purchase I made before I started to care - and giving up a mode of transport that makes me highly efficient at work.

So the sad truth I've been forced to accept, for myself, is I can't give up my car. So now you know. Work is too important to me. And so is my sanity in this crowded, human-infested island.

Given the circumstances, there are a few next-best plans I can formulate, among them is for me to downgrade to a more economical vehicle, which I am trying to do - or wait till I can afford a greener, hybrid vehicle. Or wait till I can afford to rent an apartment that is nearer work. Or in 4 and a half years time, go live in a little village in Britain where everything is accessible by foot within a mile's radius.

Either way, being environmentally-aware is a work in progress. It's not something that can be achieved overnight. There's always more you can do, things you can save, differences you can make, however small. But I've since learned to kill my zealousness in converting, or at least trying to infect people around me to this cause. Many of them - who refuse to see the goodness in little actions, however small, and who always focus on the negative, as if in doing so, it magnifies their ego and self-righteousness - misinterpret such efforts anyway.

For those disparaging, discouraging individuals - who sit in their ivory towers, who think they are too-cool-for-school for any causes, and with their noses turned up at others - I suggest some navel-gazing at how miserable their own lives must be for them to be so bitter. And for people who encounter such people, don't let them get you down.

So yes, I drive a car. Yes, I'm still trying to be green. I'm not being hypocritical. I'm just human. And at least... I'm still trying.