Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
Active travel can help tackle the climate crisis earlier than electric vehicles – even if you swap the car for a bike for just one trip a day.
What else would help is making companies fucking liable (and not just that, their CEOs directly!) for the environment damage they cause.
Oil spill because of neglected maintenance ? Straight to jail for the responsible CEO.
Fake tests for car emmissions? Straight to jail.
The high pay of the C-levels is often argued with the big responsibility they have, when in reality the have none. They should be directly and personally responsbile, thats their job.
Im really annoyed they did not do an electric bike thing in the ombudsman bill and just did electric cars.
only 10x? cycling has 0 climate impact besides the manufacturing of said bycicle itsself.
electric cars not only require 100x crazier manufacturing but also run on electricity which is made in power plants.
frankly you couldve said a million times more important and it would still be a low ball.
Paradoxically there are actually some indications that the calories burned while bicycling, especially from a meat-heavy diet, lead to more carbon emissions per mile than powering an electric car with anything other than coal. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1108357_electric-cars-vs-bicycles-which-has-a-higher-carbon-footprint There are still a wide variety of societal benefits to more bicycling but it's not quite accurate say "zero" impact I think.
We've made fun of that weird propaganda piece when it came out though.
That completely ignores the fact that a human being needs at least half an hour to one hour of light exvercise / physical movement daily to stay healthy at all. If you do not cycle or run, you'd need to go to a gym / fitness studio.
Also, if you care at all about CO2 emissions, eating vegan or vegetarian food is the way.
Also, driving 3 or 4 kilometers to a supermarket to get a veggie pizza needs way more energy and CO2 for the drive, thsn for the food itself. You can compute that from the fuel consumption of a car - about 180 Grams of CO2 per person per kilometer, so 1.4 kilograms for 4 kilometers each way.
Also, often the danger of cycling is stressed. That's rubbish because of the health effect of physical exercise - the most dangerous aspect of modern life is lack of exercise, and if you use a bike instead a car you are wayyy less likely to die of cardiovascular problems, which are the real killer, not accidents.
It's like these people are eating minimum amount of food in the first place.
That's why ebikes are considered better than analog bikes by some metrics. Outside of electrified trains, there's pretty much nothing as efficient as an ebike for distance /calories burned + electricity usage (minimal, compared to EVs)
I think the takeaway here should be that meat heavy diets are worse for the environment than you might realize.
The takeaway should not be that cars are only barely worse than bikes.
There's tire particles that are released and occasional grease and repairs. So it'll never be 0 climate impact after manufacturing. Just a little nitpick.
But it's still the best choice.
Electric bikes ruin the climate impact ratio. They are still much better than electric cars tho.
Yes, e-bikes take more resources to manufacture, especially the battery, but:
While manufacturing an e-bike is more resource intensive than a pushbike, lifetime CO2 emissions of an e-bike can be lower, because a motor is more efficient than human muscles.
If someone has an E-bike, depending on how they use it, it's possible that it will replace more car trips than a pushbike would. E-bikes also require less physical fitness, which again can increase uptake among people who aren't as fit or have health problems, for example.
This video is worth a watch: Simon Clark - How bad are electric bikes for the environment?
When you power your bike with your legs, you burn energy. That energy comes from food. Producing and transporting the food to you has a climate impact. Cycling has a climate impact.
Electric cars are a car industry solution