May 20, 2006
Williamsburg, Virginia

If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do...How would I be? What would I do?

Buckminster Fuller

Dusk falls on the College of William and Mary, and I take one last walk around campus. I'm leaving a year later than I intended, and yet I am still leaving without a degree. I will likely return in the fall to defend my Master's thesis, but I had hoped to leave now with a sense of accomplishment and completion.

I haven't even finished my work for my job. I will need to complete it on the road and email it in. Amid these failures, I've had a strong desire to succeed at something useful and different and adventurous.

Ever since I came into possession of a car two years ago, travel had become a special pleasure for me. I found this pleasure difficult to reconcile with my environmentalist concerns over the effects of driving. Of greatest concern is the carbon dioxide emitted by driving, which contributes to global climate change.

Travel is a pleasure, but it seemed like such a decadent pleasure, at the expense of the planet. I've often thought about more sustainable ways to travel (I've traveled thousands of miles by bus), but it's always a matter of mitigation, which is neither fun nor satisfying.

But what if the environment weren't a casualty of travel? What if I could actually help the environment by traveling? What if, by driving, I could actually reduce carbon emissions?

This is the stuff of science fiction, surely. But I'd been reading things lately which suggested that the solutions to our predicaments are not utopian dreams. There are simple and beautiful answers to our problems if only we are creative enough to find them.

I had been interested in Buckminster Fuller since hearing a short profile of him on the radio. The content of the profile was roughly the following:

In the 1920s, Fuller was in his early thirties when he decided to throw himself into the frigid waters of Lake Michigan. His first daughter had died. With a newborn daughter, he was forced out of his own construction company. He was jobless and drinking heavily.

But before he jumped in, he realized that his life didn't belong to himself but to the Universe. He turned away from the lake and "set about to see what a penniless, unknown human individual might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity."

He didn't speak for a year and experimented with polyphasic sleep, trying to survive on two hours of sleep a day so that he could devote more hours to thinking. Over the next half century, he thought up revolutionary ideas for how to meet the energy, housing, and transportation needs of humanity without destroy humanity's home, "Spaceship Earth."

We just need to think dynamically, he thought. Think boldly.

I decided to embark on a Zero Emissions Road Trip. I would emit zero carbon as a result of my travel; in fact, I would reduce emissions if I could. And I would do so without any special technology. I would drive my fourteen-year-old car I had bought for $400, running on regular gasoline.

Of course, I would still be emitting carbon. Zero emissions would need to be the net result. I could buy carbon credits to offset my emissions, but then I wouldn't be reducing emissions by driving. I needed to reduce emissions in a way that required me to travel.

I decided that I would travel across the continent, and in each community I visited, I would undertake some project to reduce energy use. I would need to reduce energy use enough to offset the carbon emitted as result of my travel and all of my other activities.

I was supposed to have left Williamsburg today.

I awoke this morning on the couch. In my bed was a young woman I had met last night. I was supposed to meet my friend Mike for breakfast and bidding farewell in a few minutes. I tried to wake this woman in my bed, but she was in deep sleep.

I couldn't remember her name, so I searched in her purse for an ID. Finding one and then calling her name as I shook her shoulder, I succeeded in waking her. She looked up at me with an expression that cried, "Where am I? What did I do?" Then she relaxed a bit as she remembered.

Last night I was torn. Thinking it was my last night in Williamsburg, I wanted to enjoy myself. But I needed to prepare for my trip. I planned to stay up all night packing and setting up this website.

I decided I would have one drink then return home. In my defense, I bought only one drink that evening. But I ran into my friend Mark, who supplied me with many more.

I was reasonably sober around 3 a.m. as everyone was passing out at Mark's place. The woman who would wind up in my bed wanted to return to the house where she was staying for the weekend. I volunteered to take her.

She had been given a key to enter the house, but when we arrived, neither of us could make the key work. I offered her my couch, but when we came to my place, I insisted that she take my bed, and I collapsed onto the couch.

In the morning, my housemate must have thought I had a more interesting night than I did when she saw this young woman and me hurry out of the house. I was late to meet Mike, and as I had not done any preparation for my trip that night, I began to worry that I might not leave today.

After we got our food, I ran out to my car to get something and realized that I had left it running with the keys locked inside. I unlocked the car with my hide-a-key, but this did not bode well for my trip. Later, this evening, as I was still frantically running around, I left my car with the lights on.

If the planet and humanity depended on "how I am and what I do," I'm not sure the world would be in very capable hands. Am I mature and competent enough to take this trip? I've taken smaller trips, for a week or two, around Minnesota and New York and New England. But those were jaunts in the park compared to what lies ahead of me.

I don't know precisely what towns I'll visit or when, but I have a rough idea of the ground I want to cover. I estimate that, over the next seven to ten weeks, I will pass through around twenty-five states, two Canadian provinces, and Mexico.

Moreover, this is not a pleasure spree. I have determined to make this trip useful to the planet and its people. I have set a goal for myself, and I may succeed or I may fail.

I have some experience reducing carbon emissions. At William and Mary, I've tried to see what useful things I could do while pursuing my degree. I worked with Scott Owen and the Daily Grind coffeehouse to start it recycling after the College discontinued its campus-wide recycling program. I also helped another student set up a short-lived co-op buying club.

With the campus chapter of the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC), I led a campaign to reduce campus energy use. I also served as the teaching assistant for Professor Timmons Roberts' Environmental Sociology class. The class undertook a project to study campus energy use and propose alternatives. The administration asked SEAC to draft an energy policy for the College.

I also had volunteered with another student to advise the local New Town United Methodist Church on how to become more environmentally friendly in its operation. But we both had overcommitted ourselves, and after meeting with a Church member, Tom Hassler, the project went neglected.

I wanted Williamsburg to be the first ZERT stop and the New Town UMC plan to be my first ZERT project. I reviewed my notes from talking to Mr. Hassler and touring the Church's property. I outlined a plan for how the Church could reduce its energy use and environmental impacts within its own building and encourage Church members to do the same at home. The whole project took me five hours. If I was going to maintain the pace I wanted for this trip, I'd have to learn to do this faster.

I tried to contact Mr. Hassler at the last minute before I left town but was unable to reach him. I would email him the plan, but how was I to know what would happen after that? In measuring my carbon reductions, I can't assume that any of my actions are successful. I can count only the emissions that I know were reduced.

I similarly wonder how successful SEAC's campus energy policy will be after I've left. There's reason for hope. I worked with another student group to draft a policy on campus accessibility for people with limited mobility and other needs. Shortly after the policy was presented to the administration, I began to see changes on campus. Handrails appeared on stairs where they hadn't existed before. People in wheelchairs still needed to take the long way about, but now these stairs were accessible to people with moderate mobility.

Walking to Aromas Coffeehouse this evening, I was stopped by a man on the street. He asked me if I was a student and told me he never went to college. He didn't want to follow the expected pattern yet lamented the lack of structure in his life.

He asked me my plans, and when I told him, he became very excited. He assumed that everyone who went to college followed a set course, with no freedom for spontaneity. He was forty-two years old and had spent the last twelve wandering the country. He enjoyed having no obligations or responsibilities, no family or mortgage. And yet there was a rueful tone to his speech.

I am twenty-five, and he had spent half my lifetime doing what I planned to for the next few months. I couldn't help thinking about my trip in comparison to his travels, and I couldn't decide if I found his story inspiring or pathetic.

I don't know what I'll be moved to do when I'm forty-two, but twenty-five seems the right age for my trip. Or my trip seems like the right thing to do at twenty-five.

In the weeks before this trip, everything's been falling apart. My computer died, my car needed to be fixed, my backpack tore a giant hole. Even today, as I've made my final preparations, I've spent more money than I wanted to. I decided that, for this trip, I would need to achieve not only zero net emissions but zero net expenses. However much money I spend, I'll need to find some way to earn on the road.

The challenges will be great. New Town United Methodist Church asked for someone to advise them on their environmental impacts. From now on, I'll need to convince people that this needs their attention.

I'll spend part of the trip traveling with others but most of it traveling alone. I hope, though, that you'll keep with me on this website. I hope to update it every couple days, and though my path ahead is mostly a mystery to me, I am excited about my plans for the immediate future.

I will travel the country trying to reduce emissions from burning coal for energy. But what happens to a coal-mining town when the coal mine closes down? I'm heading west to Appalachia to find out.