I've been riding a four-stroke, 50cc Honda Metropolitan for almost a year now. It gets about 80 to 100 miles per gallon, which is pretty impressive, but still worse than a bicycle.

As for emissions, I wrote about my scootering experience a couple weeks back in my environmental blog, and I had a lot of trouble finding reliable data on how the emissions    compared to that of two-stroke scooter engines, and to those of different cars. Anyone have any insights?

I live 15 miles from town in the middle of the woods in Vermont, and I have neither the time nor the energy to do that commute by pedal bike all the time.

I figure taking the distances by scooter is still a damn sight better than by car.

I also figure any improvement is better than no improvement, and holding people to Astronomically High Standards of Purity and Absolutism only alienates the folks for whom any change is a challenge, and only serves to make the rest of us feel bad for our lack of perfection.

Lets give credit where credit is due.  Vespa has created a 2-stroke engine that can pass european emissions without a catalytic converter.  In light of the efficiency of 2-stroke engines, this is news.  They are working on a hybrid scooter.  They are selling gorgeous 4 stroke scooters that are efficient, relatively clean, and versatile.  They are not loud.

I work as an environmental journalist in Boston's Back Bay and I live in a nearby town. What am I supposed to do? Move into a $2500-a-month apartment in the middle of Boston? I suppose I'd also have to separate from my wife, because we now live near where she works.

Or maybe I should give up a job I love so that I can work at the bar across the street? Or perhaps I could bike to work and just deal with the pain in my hinky right knee. Or I could walk to work, spending three hours commuting each way.

All of these options are unacceptable to me. So, like most people of conscience, I do my best. I get the most fuel-efficient vehicle I can afford (in my case, a Honda Met scooter). I give up meat. I change my lightbulbs. I take a job that lets me try to inform others.

I think most of us are in the same position. We're born into a deeply flawed system, one that produces far more waste than wealth. By the time we've become enlightened enough to see the ecological consequences of our actions, we're already in it way too deep, renting an inefficient apartment hooked up to a grid powered by coal, living far away from our loved ones so that we have to burn gasoline just to see them, owing too much to creditors to downshift our jobs.

Don't burn fossil fuels. It sounds so easy. But the only people who can even consider this advice are the extremely fortunate. As for the rest of us? We do our best.