If you ever fly between Bangor and Montreal, you’ll discover an efficiency flaw in our continent’s “hub-and-spoke” air transportation system.

Commercial flights are via New York City, Philadelphia or even Chicago — the cheapest ticket I found as I write this takes you first to Philadelphia, then to Chicago, and then to Montreal. It’s 284 miles to walk, but sitting on the cheapest flight, you’ll cover about 2,000 miles. Traveling between Bangor and Montreal could be much more efficient on a direct flight, but we’re forced to waste resources flying to faraway airports. As long as passengers accept the existing system, airlines won’t offer a direct flight.

So many destinations on our sustainability journey raise the same efficiency dilemma as trying to travel between the spokes of our airline network. Our existing systems and mindsets send us in the wrong direction. Hybrid cars are a good example. Internal combustion engines are horribly wasteful and dangerous. Electric motors are extremely efficient and safe. But most car manufacturers are sending their customers down the wrong road, selling them hybrid vehicles that lock in waste by requiring the use of internal combustion engines. A more sustainable car industry would focus on solving core problems, so more people can enjoy all-electric vehicles now without being forced to detour to drive hybrids for decades.

The transition from thermal power plants that heat up water, either by burning fuel or splitting uranium atoms, to solar power is another example. Nuclear advocates try to convince people to visit an unnecessary hub on our energy journey. The idea that more nuclear power is necessary to solve our energy challenge reminds me of the old joke: How do you get to the South Pole? Go to the North Pole, then head in any direction.

It may be possible to achieve sustainable energy using nuclear power, just like it may be possible to get to the South Pole by first going to the North Pole and then traveling straight in any direction. But neither uranium nor thorium is renewable, so the faster we use them up, the further from a sustainable energy future we’re getting. Nuclear power is also hard to distribute: think how much harder it is to put a nuclear power plant on your roof versus a few solar modules. Do we really need to visit the North Pole to get to the South Pole?

Huge houses that are built to “green” standards are yet another example of a wasteful effort on the way to reaching a sustainability goal. Rather than solving an unnecessary problem, i.e. how do you sustainably build 5,000 square feet of living space for a single person, it would be better to head in the right direction from the start, i.e. how many square feet of living space does one person really need?

In my 30 years of helping people achieve their sustainability goals, I’ve found that more than 90% of what people worry about are problems that don’t actually need to be solved. When we map out people’s true destination, we find that they are first planning to go in exactly the wrong direction. Burning fuel more efficiently is an energy hub that many people aim to visit. But that is never where they want to end up. So why go there? Finding ways to keep burning fuel delays arrival at your ultimate destination: using electric motors so you don’t need to burn any kind of
fuel, anywhere, ever.

Efficiency matters because our time, energy, and money are limited. If we exhaust our resources by taking two flights in the wrong direction, we can’t board the final flight to reach our goal. If you know where you want to go, you can map the best way to get there. Even though it seems daunting, calmly taking a week to bicycle the direct route could be a much smarter plan than frantically flying across several time zones and risk getting stuck in a distant airport. To achieve a sustainable future within our lifetimes, both the journey and the destination matter.

Fred Horch is principal adviser for Sustainable Practice. To learn more about sustainable efficiency, visit SustainablePractice.Life and subscribe to “One Step This Week.”