So get this: I had a small dinner party a few months ago, and half of the guests drove to my apartment. I know that's not exactly earth-shattering news on the face of it, but here's the thing: We live in New York City, home to 26 subway lines and 200-plus bus routes. New Yorkers, of all people, are supposed to be car-free. Yet here were perfectly intelligent adults-my friends-being lazy-ass Americans, guzzling up gas just for the hell of it, and adding insult to the injury of what happened to be, incidentally, a 70-degree January evening.

For god's sake, why couldn't they have just taken the subway?

I stewed about their behavior for days afterward, and muttered aloud like a crazy person while reading the New York Times piece "In Traffic's Jam, Who's Driving May Be Surprising." It discussed how city data proves that New Yorkers, not suburban commuters, are the new fools to blame for all the car traffic in Manhattan.

This isn't L.A., people. Didn't anyone get it? Had they forgotten that we were at war over oil? I mean, why on earth had we all left the suburbs in the first place?

Throughout the week, I felt superior-walking to Health Nuts to buy my tofu and organic broccoli, riding the herky-jerky No. 2 train to my magazine job, taking the M104 bus down Broadway to get to therapy. I was simply loving myself and my mass-transit ways, smugly aware of the ever-so-slender carbon footprint I was leaving in my wake. Oh, what a mindful little urban tree hugger I was!

I was about to dial 311, New York's information hotline, to complain-again-about the city's refusal to recycle yogurt containers, when I had a sudden realization: It was time to go move my own car for the street sweeper.

Of course, I have rationalizations for owning a car: I barely ever use it, except to leave town for the regional assignments I get as a travel writer. Sometimes I drive to Cape Cod during the summer (although I usually take a train). And once in a while I might load it up with Housing Works Thrift Store donations to cart across town.

But I'm dead serious when I tell you that the most use my car ever gets is when I have to move it and then sit waiting-an hour each time twice a week-for the street cleaners to pass. The car is just an old Ford Escort, whose tank I can fill for $23. And it's not as if I even went out of my way to buy the thing. My dad was getting rid of it, and he asked me if I wanted it, and what could I say? It was an opportunity that just fell in my lap.

And so, a week after my party, as I was stuck in the driver's seat killing time, newspaper blanketing the steering wheel, the absurdity of the situation began to weigh on me. It hit me that I, subway rider and tree hugger that I am, was actually just as guilty as my friends. They, too, had probably convinced themselves that they weren't making much of an impact-and that the odd configurations of their individual lives made it necessary to have a car to get by.

I decided to do some asking around.

My globetrotting photographer friends Richard and Seth got points for telling me they had a Prius-kept chiefly for trips out of town and also for commuting to work-related photo shoots and picking up friends at the airport (although they did drive to my Upper West Side dinner from the West Village). They're eco-conscious in other areas as well. "We've switched to mainly compact fluorescents, I ride my bike all over Manhattan, and I try to buy mostly organic and locally produced food, especially from farmers at the green market," Richard says.

William, my personal trainer, who also lives on the Upper West Side, consciously drinks Brita-filtered water out of a Nalgene container rather than buy endless bottles of the stuff. But he owns a minivan that he and his wife use to get to their second home in Pennsylvania every weekend.

My dear friend Rebekah is a no-nonsense human-rights lawyer who lives in Park Slope with her husband and baby daughter. She has an old car that they mainly use in Brooklyn. "It makes it possible for us to go shopping at better places, and get more quickly to visits with friends and family," Rebekah says, adding: "Occasionally, I feel guilty that it doesn't get better gas mileage."

Even my earthy-crunchy Brooklyn pal Karen has a car-used mainly to get out of town with her partner, to places including her parents' home in New Jersey. "It makes it more bearable, even if it's just psychological, knowing we can just get in the car and go whenever we want to," she explains. The vehicle spends most of its time parked, she notes. What's more, she buys organic and doesn't own an air conditioner. "One thing I do feel guilty about is that I like to get it washed often, because it's white and it starts to look filthy really fast," she confesses. "Am I wasting water?" Still, she adds, "When I compare myself to others, I feel better."

Finally, there's Mariann, also a Brooklynite, who starts off by saying that she has her massive, four-door Buick LeSabre (it used to be her father's) so she can drive her elderly dog to the park. "So Austin is always in the car when you drive?" I press. My honest confidant breaks quickly. "I actually drive her to the part of the park I want to be in," Mariann says with a laugh, conceding as well that she also drives to visit friends within Brooklyn and to go shopping. Through our discussion, she realizes that owning a car is, for her, a clung-to remnant of her suburban upbringing: "It makes me feel like more of a grownup." For the record, she says, she does feel guilt-"but then I quickly rationalize it away and somehow turn driving into a necessity."

Turns out that yes, everyone's reasoning is a bit more complex than I'd allowed for back on that balmy January night-and that I, too, had much room for improvement.

The next time I sat double-parked in the driver's seat, waiting for the street sweeper to go by, I had a simple sort of epiphany: I realized that I needed to worry about my own carbon footprint more than about everybody else's. While my fantasy might be that everyone could make a small degree of change-that Richard and Seth could tell their friends to catch a taxi (or better, a bus) from the airport; that Rebekah could try shopping at one of the five grocery stores within walking distance; that Karen could take New Jersey Transit to visit her parents; and that Mariann, who has many other adult virtues, could at least trade in her gas gulper for something efficient-I am beginning to understand that the most effective move I could make would be to sell the Escort at the end of the summer and join Zipcar for those times when an assignment sends me someplace without mass transit. Because the only behavior I can control is, after all, my own.

But seriously, Karen: Stop with the car washes, already.

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