Over the holidays, I received in my inbox Step 8 of Sam's programme for ethical living : Holiday Higher. It is about making environment-friendly choices in holiday travel and accomodation. As usual his links are mainly geared to the UK and Europe, which is OK because I do travel to Scotland sometimes. EcoBNB has zero carbon accommodation options worldwide.

This Christmas season I had very challenging travels - driving through winter conditions with few hours of light across the Rocky Mountains between Alberta and BC (Canada). Family members who opted for plane travel didn't fare better. Flight cancellations are very common in winter at the small airports around where my parents live in the southeast of British Columbia.

After the car trouble I had which could have turned out much worse (like if it had happened when I was driving through zero visibility fog), I decided I'm not going to make the trip that way again at this time of year. Why don't I go by train or bus/coach? Ha! I would love to. Europeans will scarcely be able to credit the poverty of public transportation options we now have in western Canada. Greyhound is gone. Canada's only intercontinental passenger train's only(!) route is far to the north of where I need to go. There is a patchwork of private bus/coach companies I might be able to cobble together a trip from, with difficulty, but it's all difficulty now. I need to support them if I want them to continue to exist, so I will try.

ethicalrevolution.co.uk/holida…

In my ethical living journey with Sam, the next step is to #degoogle.

I had already made - what I think is probably the most important - step by changing my search engine. For several months I have now been relying on #Ecosia (planting trees with each search!), occasionally supplemented by Kagi (free 100 search trial). Also using the Ecosia browser for work (Chrome compatible) and #Firefox for home/personal. So Google hasn't been able to compile data on me that way for awhile.

I've also signed up for #Filen data storage at an amazing lifetime rate - I hope they stick around. German company that runs on renewable energy. I also did a trial with #Sync (Canadian company) and would highly recommend them if syncing and sharing data is important to you.

I use the Maps app on my iphone rather than Google Maps for driving because I find it gives better instructions without changing routes on me. But for planning trips, I have to say I still use Google Maps. Open Street Map looks great but it doesn't seem to have the Giving Directions feature - am I wrong?

In my work I use Google Earth Engine - a platform for processing satellite data - can't degoogle that unless they quit providing the service and am forced to.

Trying to remember to go through #Invidious to view videos on YouTube.

Google Chat - Again my workplace is all Google and I have to use it. Otherwise, Zoom is a well known alternative. Sam's page also also brought my attention to #Jitsi, which looks very easy to use - you don't have to make an account or anything.

I looked into private email alternatives and found some great options, but I decided to continue to use my gmail as it would be too much hassle to change. However, I am going to access it through the #Thunderbird client on desktop instead of the gmail website. This has the advantage of my mail being backed up on my desktop instead of just in Google's cloud if I do decide to switch emails in the future.

So not completely degoogled but that's the amount that makes sense in my life for now. When retired I can degoogle more. LIke I said, I do think the Search and Browser are the most important and painlessly replaced. #Google Search definitely used to be the best but kind of sucks now with the bloat of sponsored results.