Ocean Book of the Month
Each month in 2008, The Ocean Project will highlight a book focused on our blue planet or environmental sustainability. Books for all age groups will be covered, non-fiction and fiction, prose and poetry. If you have a suggestion, please let us know.
How to Live Well Without Owning a Car
By Chris Balish
"The first practical, accessible, and sensible guide to living in North America without owning a car."
Cars are one of the great mixed bags of our time. On one hand they are wonders of engineering, providing comfort and convenience to facilitate our modern lives. On the other hand they create snarled traffic, encourage sprawling suburbs, and threaten the very future of life on Earth and in the Ocean. In the US, about 27% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation sector, contributing to climate change and resulting in changing weather patterns, ocean acidification, and altered ecosystems.
For many committed to doing their part to fight climate change and air pollution, the idea of car-less living may seem like an unrealistic ideal or a journey down a lonely path. Chris Balish, however, in his How to Live Well Without Owning a Car does a 360 on the notion of car dependence. This straightforward and realistic guide will completely change your notions about car-less living - if you thought it was all sacrifice get prepared to learn about the sweet reward - and show you that it is possible to have independence and convenience without being behind the wheel.
How to Live Well Without Owning a Car exposes the true costs of car ownership and shows how getting rid of your car can simplify your life and put you on the road to financial freedom. It's packed with realistic, economical alternatives to owning a car, including chapters on car-sharing, carpooling, and even car-free dating. One critic writes:
"Chris Balish shows why kicking car dependency could be the soundest and sanest lifestyle change you can make, and provides realistic strategies for making the leap. From saving money to building a better world, even diehard autoholics will find hundreds of reasons to set out on the (car-free) road less traveled."
Best of all How to Live Well Without Owning a Car comes directly from the horse's mouth. Chris Balish has lived car-free (accidentally a first) for four years and has saved almost $40,000 in the process. In How to Live Well Without Owning a Car, Balish shares his own experience of becoming car-free, humorous at times, that will get you thinking – I can do it too!
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If you are interested in reading this book but also want to be a conscious consumer, please visit your local library and check it out.
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