In search of a more sustainable future, we ditch our cars for a week — and find more than a way around

Unless you're a climate-change denier sneering at bicyclists from your Hummer, you know that driving cars, as a human habit, is kind of bad, and that burning fossil fuels derived from foreign (turm)oil is unsustainable, which is also kind of bad, not to mention already ruining the world our species calls home. But on the scale of daily life, you also know Nashville isn't exactly the easiest town to get around without a car, and at the beginning of the day, it really comes down to this: What else are you going to do?

As much as we like to talk the talk around here, we decided we'd have to walk the walk (and bike the bike, train the train, etc.) if we were going to convince anyone that a more ecologically sound Nashville was worth giving a damn about — and more to the point, doing something to realize.

So members of the Scene staff took a pact of sustainability and agreed to leave our gasoline-chugging, dirty carbon footprint-leaving automobiles in park for a week — making our way to and from the office by any means eco-friendly. While our week of alternative transportation wasn't always pretty — there was some sweat and some blisters — it was educational, motivational and sometimes even fun. But perhaps most importantly, it was a little gentler on the planet than a typical week of internally combusting petroleum in our individual metal boxes. And that's something we could definitely get used to.

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