Am I part of the problem

As I mentioned in the commuting post, I've been questioning my current lifestyle. It's not horrible. I think we are doing a really good job with our food. Most of it is either organic or local or both and we only eat our occasionally. We are working on making the house more efficient. It's more than 100 years old and no one ever bothered to insulate the top or bottom, so we've a ways to go. We are making progress, though. Anyway, it'd be more wasteful to start from scratch with a new house.

What nags at me is that we live an hour outside the city and I commute in 2 to 3 days a week. It's not horrible, but the last two years we were in Berkeley, we drove 10 to 15 thousand miles each year. This year will probably be more like 20. We are going the wrong way. I might bike to the train in good weather, but I wouldn't seem my son at all on those days (and leaving his pregnant mom home with him for a full day isn't fair). In the future it may become a more common thing, but not right now.

But there was a reason we chose Hopedale. We're actually in a fairly densely settled area. I just chose to work in a different place. When we are home, we often walk downtown to breakfast. When the weather was nice, we walked across town to our friends' house every few days. We can walk to the drugstore and to Shaws, we just have to make the commitment to. In the nice weather, we often walked to DQ for soft serve.

So I take a hit on the commute, but this is not a bad place to go green. Maybe the train will bail me out and complete the deal. Or Ed can double my salary and we'll move into the city.