Take the Burn Calories, Not Carbon! Pledge

Why do I mention them together? Because in America today, a clear and troubling link has formed between the burning of gasoline in our cars and the burning of calories in our bodies. It's a kind of "energy equation," if you will. At the present, the relationship is negative: More driving + less walking and biking = more tons of carbon in the atmosphere + more tons around our collective waistline.

There are two reasons this situation has come to pass. First, for the last 50 years we have designed our communities around the automobile. In many places, it is difficult and even dangerous to walk or bike. Second, as walking and biking have become more difficult, driving has become second nature, so embedded in our culture and our behavior that we do it without thinking.

To punctuate this decline in mobility outside the automobile: 40 percent of the trips we take are two miles or less - well within walking or biking distance -- yet 75 percent of those short trips are taken by car. While distressing, this fact is actually a source of hope. We have the opportunity to convert some of those short car trips to walking and biking ventures in our every day travel, or what we at Rails-to-Trails Conservancy call "active transportation." By substituting human energy for gasoline, we can fight the obesity epidemic and the climate crisis simultaneously. We'll burn more calories and less carbon, creating a positive energy equation.

In short: More walking and biking + less driving = healthier people + a healthier planet.

That's a win-win proposition that is simply too good to pass up. That's why Rails-to-Trails Conservancy is launching a multi-year effort to build an active transportation movement. Absent such a movement, the highway lobby will continue to dominate transportation policy and our communities will continue to be designed around the automobile. I'm not anti-car, but don't you think we should at least have the choice to get around without one? To make that happen, we have to energize the nation to support more safe places to walk and bike in America's communities.

So please make your voices heard! Visit our Web site at www.railstotrails.org to take the Burn Calories, Not Carbon!^TM Pledge. If we join our voices together, we can create a future with healthier people, healthier places and a healthier planet.

Remember: Burn Calories, Not Carbon!^TM. Pass it on.