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What's the Carbon Footprint of Bicycling?
Hugh Pickens writes "Brian Palmer writes that although none of the major manufacturers has released data on their energy consumption and how much greenhouse gas making a bicycle requires, Shreya Dave, a graduate student at MIT, recently estimated that manufacturing an average bicycle results in the emission of approximately 530 pounds of greenhouse gases. Therefore, given a 'typical U.S. diet,' you would have to ride your bike instead of driving for around 400 miles to cover the bike's initial carbon footprint. However, calculating the total environmental impact of a mode of transit involves more than just the easy-to-measure metrics like mileage per gallon. Using a life-cycle assessment, Dave concluded that an ordinary sedan's carbon footprint is more than 10 times greater than a conventional bicycle's (PDF) on a mile-for-mile basis, assuming each survives 15 years and you ride the bike 2,000 miles per year. What about other ways to get to work? According to Dave's life-cycle analysis, the only vehicle that comes close to a bicycle is the peak-hour bus — and it's not really that close. A fully loaded bus is responsible for 2.6 times the carbon emissions total of a bicycle per passenger mile while off-peak buses account for more than 20 times as many greenhouse gases as a bicycle. What about the carbon footprint of walking? 'Walking is not zero emission because we need food energy to move ourselves from place to place,' says environmentalist Chris Goodall. 'Food production creates carbon emissions.'"
I have a size 13 carbon boot that I regularly shove just as far up mother earth's ass as I can. I live large and I play large. This nation (USA) is the greatest on the face of the earth despite Obama and the libtards trying to ruin it. We carry the planet on our backs as far as helping other countries and I figure we are entitled to a little leeway when it comes to the size of a "carbon footprint" (whatever the hell that is supposed to mean). So ride a bicycle if you want. I had a job starting when I was twelve years old and that is how I got to work. But when I turned sixteen I bought a used car with the money I had earned and left the bicycle part of my childhood behind. Grown men drive cars and trucks. How can you provide for your wife with a bicycle? "Honey, I need to go to the hospital." "Sure, just jump on the back of my ten speed." Jeezzz.
It has been assumed that, in the United States, a commuter will not change her eating habits if she switches from driving to walking to work,
LOL you've got to be kidding, or have never exercised, or at least have never seen other people exercise. Lots of fat bikers around here, because they burn 50 calories on a leisurely sunday afternoon cruise, then rationalize to themselves that the double bacon cheeseburger for lunch mon-fri is OK because they exercised.
Also accident rates are spectacularly higher for bikes, walking, etc, and the energy cost of medical care (or early disability / death) is probably a huge multiple of the energy consumed by the bike... I mean think about it, if that ER visit costs $10K worth of energy, that kinda swamps the cost of a nice $500 worth of energy in a bike.
Even worse, don't forget that it takes ten pounds of crude oil to deliver a pound of food to a plate, when everything is added together. The energy cost of a pound of olive oil is not how much CO2 released when you burn it, its all the CO2 it takes to make it, which is a large multiple of the energy contained in the food. This makes taking a bike ten times worse of an idea.
When I drive, the majority of my energy cost is at the gas pump. When I bike, the majority of my energy cost is medical, followed by food, and manufacture and infrastructure cost, which is all that was covered in the study, is practically lost in the noise.
For me, that bike trip would be a round trip of 40 miles per day. I live in a civilized area so that's less than an hour per day in the car, but on foot that would be a good 10 hours per day of walking. High density has severe negative costs, that's why the vast majority of the worlds population does not voluntarily live in high density conditions. The energy cost of replicating downtown Manhattan and forcing the population at gunpoint to live there cannot be ignored.
You can't avoid the distance issue w/ walking by claiming people would move within a mile to walk, because if they could, they would move within a mile to drive, if that area were both safe and affordable to live in.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
No shit! The entire population of the Earth could die off tommorrow and the flora/fauna of the Earth would continue to "have a carbon footprint".. of course it would be simply the co2/oxygen and oxygen/co2 exchanges that have been going on for aeons... These environmental wackos are getting crazier and crazier...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Just once I'd like to see a "corporation". What do they look like? Are they tall? Short? Fat? What language do they speak? Where do they live?
"Corporation" is like "they". When you don't have an argument for anything, you just blame it on "They" or the "Corporations".
Corporations are people, private individuals, working together towards a common goal, producing and selling a product. You bitch about Corporations polluting, you are really bitching about individuals doing their jobs. Don't like trucks? Don't blame the corporations, blame UAW. They are the fuckers building them.
Sure, it's easy to blame a faceless entity, but I dare, you. Go up to a UAW worker and tell them they are polluting the planet and will be the cause of untold suffering. I bet you'll get to keep some of your teeth.
BTW, Slashdot is owned and run by a "corporation", Geeknet Inc.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.