I am a junior in high school and just got my driver's license. Naturally, I am very excited and I love being able to drive myself to school. As a consequence, I rarely take the city bus anymore and I usually drive alone. My dad used to drop me off on his way to work, but now we take two separate cars on what is largely the same route. I realize that my change in behavior is contributing immensely to my carbon footprint, especially since transportation was already my highest emissions area by far. In the future I may have to compromise and only drive alone to school some days, or start a carpool to help reduce this unnecessary pollution.

One thing that you could do is talk to your dad about being the one who drives to school. In this way you do have not give up your love for driving at all and effectively halve (or eliminate depending upon how you look at it) your carbon footprint from your commute to school. This also allows your dad to keep driving if it is something he enjoys, gives you two time to bond, and saves gas money.  [Carpooling vs. Driving Alone Graph](//muut.com/u/footprint/s1/:footprint:oRry:commute2.png.jpg) As you can see from this American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials graph the number of people carpooling to work is actually falling, despite a recent uptick in the amount of work done to promote sustainability. This is a problem because carpooling is the second most popular method of transport to work, as shown by this Department of energy Alternative Fuels Data Center graph, [Means of Transportation to Work](//muut.com/u/footprint/s3/:footprint:rchm:chart.jpeg.jpg)  While it is certainly not as good as biking or taking the bus, take it upon yourself (and help your father) to change this and do your part to help save our planet.