State Rep. Says Biking Is Not Earth Friendly Because Breathing Produces CO2

terbeaux writes "The fact that Rep Ed Orcutt (R — WA) wants to tax bicycle use is not extraordinary. The representative's irrational conviction is. SeattleBikeBlog has confirmed reports that Orcutt does not feel bicycling is environmentally friendly because the activity causes cyclists to have 'an increased heart rate and respiration.' When they contacted him he clarified that 'You would be giving off more CO2 if you are riding a bike than driving in a car...' Cascade blog has posted the full exchange between Rep Ed Orcutt and a citizen concerned about the new tax."

Comments

RTFA

[TheRaven64]

He doesn't say that bicycles produce more CO2 than cars, he says that:

• Drivers pay road tax to cover the costs of roads, including bike lanes, why shouldn't bikes pay some of this?
• Cycling increases your respiration rate so produces more CO2 than not cycling.

Both of these are true. The only one he is actually using to justify his position (that bikes should pay road tax) is the former, the second point is refuting the point that bikes are environmentally friendly. The second point is debatable: it's a question of what the basic comparison is. Cycling is more polluting than staying at home, less polluting than driving a car.

There are lots of valid reasons to mock Republicans, we don't need to make more up.

Re:RTFA

[Alioth]

Road wear isn't a factor of tire PSI, but axle load. Road wear increases at an exponetional proportional to axle load.

See p.23 of this: http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf - showing that a 5 axle tractor/trailer does 9600 times the road damage than a car, despite only weighing 20 times as much. (A bicycle's wear to the road is likely immeasurably small compared to a car).

I checked The Onion...

[advid.net]

This news looks like one of The Onion great news... but I just checked, and I couldn't find it.

Anyway, one should point out that biking produces less CO2 than walking or using any other vehicle, for a given distance.

Folks in this guys district must be embarrased

[turkeyfish]

Who is voting for this guy? It must be a corner of WA where stupid is a virtue.

An average car produces 5.1 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. The average resting human produces 170,000 liters, or 340kg carbon dioxide per year. With a moderate level of activity, we can increase this to a conservative 500kg. There is simply no comparison. Clearly, this guy is an idiot masquerading as a "representative" of people's needs.

Re:CO2 isn't the only biking benefit

[YttriumOxide]

To me, this all seems like a problem with cyclist education and your local laws.

In European cities, where cycling is much more common, there seems to be significantly fewer (although sadly still more than zero) idiots. I assume it's simply that because cycling is so much more common, both the cyclists and the vehicle drivers are more used to dealing with each other.

Beyond that, cyclists can and do end up taking the blame when they cause an accident. An acquaintance of mine here in Germany was cycling drunk one day, ran a red light and got hit side on by a VW convertible going 50km/h. He was thrown a significant distance and woke up in hospital, lucky to be alive. Upon being released from hospital, a couple of police officers had a nice chat with him about the accident and the end result was that he ended up paying two separate fines for cycling whilst under the influence as well as running a red light; AND he had to pay for the damage he caused to the car (normally there's a type of insurance here that covers that sort of thing, but being the relatively irresponsible type (obviously) he doesn't have it).

How much smaller of a tax?

[tepples]

That just means they should pay a smaller tax, thats all.

A 2000 pound passenger vehicle in use weighs 1000 pounds per axle. A 200 pound bicycle in use weighs only 100. Because road wear increases as the fourth power of weight per axle, ten times the weight implies roughly 10,000 times the road wear. How much do you charge each driver per year in road tax? And how much would it cost the state to bill each cyclist 1/10,000 of that?