"I
don't understand you," Sem's mother says. "Since you've got that car,
you've been using it to go to school more and more often. And you even study environmental
science. If anyone should know that the earth is warming up because too much
CO2 is being emitted, it's you. When I used to go to university, I used to ride
my bike. I loved cycling the twenty two kilometres through all kinds of
weather.
Sem looks outside. He knows that his mother
is a bit right, he has indeed been taking the car more and more often lately.
But what does she want? His studies are much harder than he had expected, he
works on them day and night. He realises that time is valuable and he gets to
school much quicker by car. "Look at the weather," Sem grumbles to
his mother. "It's raining cats and dogs. I worked until late at night to
finish my report. I really don't have time to cycle for forty-five minutes and
back."
Sem walks grumpily out of the house and
slams the door behind him. His mother feels pitiful and stares at the closed
door. Recently Sem has been retreating more and more to his room. His studies
are indeed very tough, but the ease with which he takes the car every time, is
actually no longer acceptable. And that's not all. He also plays more and more
video games and she has seen on the power bill how much extra consumption they
have since he installed the new video card. It uses up to 150 Watts at peak
times.
Sem's mother is worried about global
warming. And it is precisely these kinds of things that you can do something
about yourself. Lately she has been arguing more often with Sem about this. How
nice it would be if Sem would care about it even a little bit ...
