The Workermonkey

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

“The Environmental Paradox of Bicycling” 

# posted by Damon @ 7/19/2006 12:10:00 PM

First, this was in the signature of someone on a forum: "Advice of the day :: Don't get in a Bible quoting contest with an atheist"


And now, this article says that if people trade their car for a bike, environmentally it doesn't really help. The main assumption is that the person was sedentary before, so by cycling, they increase their energy use and therefore need more food. They also live longer, which has a very negative impact on the environment. The bit about eating more is significant because our food typically contains only 15% of the energy required to produce and distribute it. So while of course the basic assumption is pretty goofy since the people that decide to trade their car for a bike are probably pretty fit already, the assumption about the inefficiency of our food supply is a good one. Seven Days had several articles about this last week, as some people in Vermont prepare to eat locally in August. While giving up all food from outside your area is far too hardcore to become mainstream and therefore won't affect America as a whole, people consciously thinking about where their food comes from and just taking the local option when possible, could have benefits.

1 comments

this reminds me of a solor power project i did in school, everyone wanted to use PV solar cells for everything as a great way to save energy, but at the time, it took more energy to produce each cell then it could possibly produce durings its life time, an overall loss of energy.

By  Supreme Monkey Overlord, at Wednesday, July 19, 2006 1:16:00 PM  

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