Most rural living isn't low carbon

I was down in Devon with my other half recently trying to decide whether we could live down there on a small holding one day and if so where exactly we'd want to be.

We hired a car because: a) we were almost killed last time we went down there on our bikes; and b) Devon is big. We drove 502 miles in ten days and used 39.25 litres of diesel. Driving around was all a bit of a shock to me because I gave it up years ago. Actually I didn't do any of the driving - she did it all. But still - being in a car was a shock to the system.

But what was a much bigger shock was how much carbon dioxide we created. To work out how much CO2 a diesel car emits you have to multiply the litres of diesel by 2.64. So for us that gives a total of 103kg of CO2, or about 50kg each. That really shocked me because my rule of thumb is that, if we're to keep global warming to under 2ºC, then everyone on the planet needs to create no more than a tonne of CO2 per year. So our driving in ten days was 1/20 of our annual allowance!

We probably drove a bit more than the average countryside dweller, but probably not much more. Most people in the countryside seem to drive everywhere, which is not surprising as there are really no alternatives. Unless you live in or near a small market town, or your community has created a degree of self-sufficiency, rural living is not a low carbon option. I'm not saying that we should all move to the cities - just that the end of cheap oil is going to be a shock for everyone.