One big problem with cycling is riding in rain or cold weather. If only there was a canopy that I could put on my bike in a few minutes and then go out for ride, that'd be so awesome! Even something permanent would be good but then you start turning it into a car and now human power is not enough to drive this vehicle. A covered single seat vehicle that is mostly human powered with some electric assist when needed and gyro stabilization would be my dream commute vehicle
Wow I'm an avid cyclist (though not by the definition of this article, since I take the subway to work and back (there's no alternative)) and I had never heard of a velomobile. That is really cool.
Velomobiles are pretty common on bike paths between cities but you rarely if ever see them in inner city traffic. They don't do well in dense traffic but they are super nice for longer distances.
No car is ever going to be as green as a bicycle. Forget cars. A motorcycle is probably the smallest powered vehicle that is street legal. Smallest one still will weigh at least 250lb. Moving just that mass alone, you’ve blown your energy budget vs a bicycle.
Oh I suppose you could argue about the environmental cost of producing the extra calories consumed by the cyclist. Growing and transporting that grass fed steak after all is going to require a whole lot of energy too. And not the clean kind. But you are still already operating at such a handicap, that there is no way a motorcycle, let alone a car, could compete.
On the other hand, unless the entire place is for bicycles only, what is the cost in human life for accidents caused by cycle-car interactions? Or the productivity cost for not showing up to work on rainy snowy days? I guess all you valley dwellers should probably cycle to work to save the planet for us all. We will applaud you from our AWD monstrosities here in the North East.
Forget cars. A motorcycle is probably the smallest powered vehicle that is street legal. Smallest one still will weigh at least 250lb. Moving just that mass alone, you’ve blown your energy budget vs a bicycle.
Electric bicycles are much lighter than 250 lb, and are definitely street legal.
Human assisted electric motorcycles are fully powered when the human is not assisting them. You are of course right that popular ICE vehicles, cars and motorcycles, are much, much heavier than humans, and so have little hope to achieve similar efficiency to humans on bicycles. However, if your constraints is to go as fast as bicycles, and be as safe as bicycles, I don't understand why you wouldn't be able to be more green. Electric engines are very, very efficient at transforming electricity to mechanical power, and solar panels are more efficient at transforming solar power to electricity than the plants are at converting solar power to edible calories.
My whole point is that it is a choice between a safe fast method of transportation that works on virtually all weather, and an unsafe mostly seasonal slow method of transportation that is significantly greener. A powered bicycle that can go 15 mph is not in the same category as a motorcycle that can go 80 mph. Basically, if it can go on the freeway or not is the distinction I am making. Your electric assisted bicycle is just a better, less green bicycle.
Yeah, no kidding. The way things are today in many parts of the US make cars the only viable option.
The real alternative to cars is better public transportation. Even cities with terrible weather can have great public transportation solutions. Cars are fine for rural areas, but no reason cities and suburbs shouldn't be re-engineered for bicycles and better public transport.
> Oh I suppose you could argue about the environmental cost of producing the extra calories consumed by the cyclist.
The human body is very efficient. I'd be extremely surprised if my 15 minute bicycle commute to work burned more than 100 calories on top of my BMR. There's just no comparison.
> I guess all you valley dwellers should probably cycle to work to save the planet for us all. We will applaud you from our AWD monstrosities here in the North East.
I'd link to icebike.org where they used to have pictures of people cycling in Chicago in winter and articles on suitable clothing and tires, but that domain got bought out and commercialized into some mountain bike advertising site.
Cycling isn't that great. Humans are about 10% efficient at converting food energy to power. Plants are about 10% efficient at converting sunlight to food energy. So that's 1% efficiency from solar to pedals. Once you count the fossil fuels used in farming, which I forget the numbers for, I think a motorbike works out better for greenhouse gas emissions than cycling. Electric bike is probably the best.
That's assuming you don't reduce other workouts to make up for it. So riding your e-bike to the gym defeats the purpose.
In addition- bicycling is incredibly energy efficient. According to the citation in this Wikipedia article it is The most effecient means of movement available! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance
You could say bicycles and vim are my favorite tools.
Yes, humans take calories, and convert it to energy at a rate of 25%. But you aren't eating coal and turning it into energy.
The ways that humans turn sunlight into energy is that the sunlight hits plants, which gets harvested by humans, which gets fed to cows, and then get harvested, prepared, and transported to stores, and THEN it is consumed by humans.
I sincerely doubt humans are more efficient than cars, on a per energy basis.
This. Last estimate I saw said that you consume 10KW by just sitting there and breathing doing nothing. Because agriculture to feed you takes so much damn energy. Really we are talking about the difference in that roughly 10KW figure between a driver and a cyclist.
There are some mitigating circumstances though. The biggie is that all of this food is, in theory, carbon neutral; plants require CO2 to grow. While obviously this does not apply to the tractors, trucks, cargo ships etc in the rest of the preparation chain, that goes for fossil fuels as well - and chances are the fossil fuels have had to come farther and undergo even more processing. Nor are the emissions of the supply chain intrinsic to the fuel: we could theoretically replace all those tractors with electric ones powered by solar etc...
The other factor is that we can exert a great deal of personal agency over the emissions content of the food we eat. Cows, which you mention, are particularly bad because, although carbon-neutral, they effectively turn CO2 into methane which is a far more potent greenhouse gas. But we don't have to eat cows. Or food from the other side of the world. You can even grow your own food if you really want. So human-powering things reclaims personal responsibility.
I used to work with someone in Boston who cycled to work every day no matter the weather. It was a real loss to her department when she was out for a year due to two broke wrists after an accident. I also had the mispleasure of seeing a cyclist hit by a train. I commend the people that do it at great personal bodily risk.
I used to work with someone in Philadelphia who drove to work every day no matter the weather. It was a real loss to his department when he was out for a year due to spinal damage after an accident. I also had the mispleasure of having a friend die in a car accident in high school. I commend the people that do it at great personal bodily risk.
I absolutely agree. It's not. But my brain irrationally decided that having 2-3 tons of metal around me is safer than cycling on two aluminum tubes and round strips of rubber around 2-20 ton monstrosities that can and go 8-10 times faster than me. My brain isn't very good at this, on account of being human. So I won't cycle to work if I can help it, unless everyone else is too.
> The human body is very efficient. I'd be extremely surprised if my 15 minute bicycle commute to work burned more than 100 calories on top of my BMR. There's just no comparison.
Also, biking is exercise, and we should all be getting some exercise daily. If bike commuting replaces some time you'd spend at the gym, the question of how much energy exercise consumes is irrelevant since you'll be using that energy either way. As others have mentioned, that can also save you the time of going to the gym in addition to the other benefits.
> I'd link to icebike.org where they used to have pictures of people cycling in Chicago in winter and articles on suitable clothing and tires, but that domain got bought out and commercialized into some mountain bike advertising site.
I live in Wisconsin and bike all winter. Some combination of fat tires, studded tires, and internal hub makes it easier. With my studded tires ice is basically a non-issue.
It's also easier to stay warm than you might expect. If you have any kind of jacket on your core can get hot really quickly while cycling. You do need decent clothing to protect your extremities.
In China, most people ride something like this: http://www.niu.com/ - small affordable (usually in $100-300 range) electric scooters that typically use 48V 20Ah batteries for a 70-80km distance. From the Niu stats, it seems like it uses about 1.1kWh/100km (in electricity), compared to a bicycle that uses about 3.1kWh/100km (in food energy, source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport...). If the electricity produced in a "clean" way, it seems that riding an electric scooter is quite green even compared to biking.
Of course, biking has a bunch of other advantages: sport and exercise, unlimited range, transportability, not mentioning mountain biking etc.
Though I would argue with some of the author's assumptions about carbon footprints and power grid challenges, he's right that fewer cars ultimately means a better environment and less carbon. No argument with that.
However... As much as I'd love to just tell everyone to ride a bike to work, or the grocery store, or to drop off their kids, or whatever, the reality is that in most cities (especially US cities) a car is a requirement. City planners assumed everyone would have one, engineers overbuilt roads for them to the detriment of walking or biking, and businesses and residential areas are often far apart from each other.
In order to achieve a more efficient transportation system, we'll have to redesign and rebuild our cities, and that simply isn't a realistic short term goal. We should work on that, reset our standards, change our zoning laws, and encourage denser living spaces that are built for people instead of cars, but we have to recognize this will take decades.
So in the mean time, solar panels and an electric car DO have a material impact on carbon emissions, and I'd encourage everyone to begin that migration until such time as we live in cities that don't require cars.
It's not even inside our cities, getting between our cities is a complete mess. I'm ~15mi from the nearest big(2k pop+) city. There's zero buses that run these routes.
Getting to the large metro area? I'd burn 7 hours on the train for the same drive that takes me ~2.5 hours to go 150mi. When I have to travel into the office I literally can't make a day trip of it(train arrives at 12:30pm, leaves at 1pm) if I didn't use a car.
I think the emphasis on US cities is key here. I've yet to live in a european city where a car is a requirment. Agree with you on the short term however.
> City planners assumed everyone would have one, engineers overbuilt roads for them to the detriment of walking or biking, and businesses and residential areas are often far apart from each other.
Close. More like "rich white people had cars, rich white people control local zoning and planning decisions, ergo cities and suburbs were planned to accommodate those rich white people's cars, and then we all had to get one just to survive because density and infrastructure support dollars dropped to a point where other modes became unviable."
It’s too bad the US doesn’t have a “redo” cycle. Ie changing infrastructure or rebuilding anything is almost never seriously done. It’s like we’re all locked into the same mold.
electric car DO have a material impact on carbon emissions
Isn't the point of the article that it has little real impact, because in most cases it shifts the CO2 production from the car to the power plant? How long will it take until most energy needs in North America are met by renewables?
change our zoning laws, and encourage denser living spaces that are built for people instead of cars, but we have to recognize this will take decades.
If we wanted, we could redesign our cities for public transit and walkability in short order. The fundamental problem is that most North Americans don't want the changes you propose, and that is why our CO2 footprint is three times the world average.
Up front: I believe that Global Climate Change is a result of human created greenhouse gasses.
That being said, this article conflates two different kinds of pollution from transport.
One category of pollution is immediately harmful to humans: lead, nitrous oxides (NOx), particulate, sulfur compounds, unburned and partially burned fuels, dust, carbon monoxide, and others like this.
Lead causes developmental issues. Particulates, NOx, dust, and partially burned fuels cause asthma and lung irritation. Sulfur compounds (in the automotive realm, primarily from diesel fuel) cause acid rain. Partially burned fuels and NOx lead to smog.
The other kind of pollution is not immediately harmful to humans: CO2. We should definitely control CO2, but we should also be very clear that these are very different things.
The first category has been greatly reduced, to the point where some cars leave behind "cleaner" air than they take in (excluding CO2). Claiming that cars are just as harmful as they ever were is incredibly disingenuous.
A typical article decrying EVs on the assumption that nothing will change.
If every house ends up with a solar array and an equivalent of a Tesla Powerwall (other brands are available) then there won't be massive demand on the grid.
You don't have to fast-charge a Leaf. You can charge it overnight.
I pay for a "100% renewable" electricity tariff. Of course not all of the energy I draw is from renewables, but it is all reinvested in renewables.
If people continue to adopt EVs, adopt renewable tariffs, and adopt self-generation and self-storage, everything will be fine.
No, an EV is not as green as a bike. But have you ever tried getting furniture from IKEA 60 miles across country on a bike, with a baby and toddler in tow?
Disclaimer: avid cyclist (6 miles a day to commute) and EV driver since 2013.
Also, countries like Norway manage to generate most of their electricity from renewables. Just because most countries don't doesn't mean it's impossible.
It is, in fact, extremely hard, even in theory and more so in practice, for most countries to replace most energy use with energy from renewable sources, unless we go with nuclear energy. See e.g. [1].
With world wide effort, electrical connections spanning the globe, tropical countries selling solar power to colder regions, huge and cheap energy storage facilities, we could maybe achieve that, though I'm really rather rooting for fusion, which should be economically available in only a few decades.
The linked article about the problems with battery storage is from 2011 and battery technology continues to change at a rapid pace that couldn’t have been predicted then. The article uses lead acid as the example of cheapest batteries that still can’t scale but science wasn’t looking to solve that st the time. I’ve see several new battery options built from simpler and more available materials. Assuming storage is viable the arguments against solar and wind don’t hold as much weight.
But most emissions may not come from cars, that distribution depends on the city.
Some cities allow wood fueled appliances, some cities allow burning trash, some cities have a strong industrial presence, some cities have coal thermal power plants, etc.
Given the prevalence of cars in the United States and the lack of protected bicycle lanes in many places, it is probably safer to go to where you want by car than by bike.
Cycling is dangerous because of cars striking and killing cyclists. Choosing to drive the mile to the grocery store is probably statistically safer but increasing the number of bikes on the road will make drivers more conscious of vulnerable road users.
I'm having trouble finding a source right now, but I think I read somewhere that on average the small increase in the chance of dying on your commute is offset by the health benefits of cycling
Maybe, but when and how you die make a big difference. The health benefits are likely to make a difference after decades of life. The risk of dying on your commute makes a more immediate impact.
This is Spain, Denmark, and England, which might be safer than the US, but still some significant results. I'm also not sure if there are other studies that found the opposite--a systematic review would be nice.
I don't know about others but the reasons why I bike to work have nothing to do with reducing carbon or being green or being healthy, it's simply that I find it a lot more fun to get to work by bike than drive. It actually takes 20 more minutes by bike (and that's without including the immediate shower and changing clothes afterwards) but I can get a nice workout, feel refreshed and full of energy and it feels nice to be fit (ex. taking stairs at work I don't gasp for air like my coworkers).
I don't think people will start biking unless they like the activity but lots of people simply like to drive. The problem is that even those that like to ride (or would like) aren't being encouraged to do so. I'd rather focus on improving the biking infrastructure (make separated lanes, over and/or underpass bridges for big intersections, better public transit that allows to carry bikes on board) and improve the tax situation so I don't have to pay for car-only infrastructure even if I don't use it (car-only infrastructure costs such as building and maintaining freeways is mostly payed out of property taxes, not gas taxes). That way more people will feel safer to ride, feel like they are saving money while doing it and maybe even discover that they like it.
Shower immediately before you leave to knock the sweat eating stink causing bacteria load down, change and wipe your pits when you get to work, and wear natural fabrics like cotton. If you do this, you should be good for 6-8 hours, which is longer than some of your car driving co-workers who aren't as careful.
Same. I'm working from home atm but when I worked from an office I would use the commute for pleasure and exercise. Instead of walk & train for an hour each way I biked for 40 mins each way. Actually saves me time irregardless of commute time as if I didn't do that I would have to fit in exercise another way.
I know a lot of people who would probably bike to work if there was a pleasant bike path between their residence and their work... but that's not a reality.
Street cycling - even with bike lanes - can be terrifying, especially for those without experience. In the urban environment cars, trucks, other bicyclists, pedestrians... all operate in a very unpredictable way that frequently forces you to make snap decisions that impact your safety directly. It's chaos, and it's very intimidating.
Even if the weather cooperates and the distance is reasonable. If it is dark and raining it feels miserable and dangerous.
I totally agree that when I can bicycle to work, I arrive in a much better mood, assuming I didn't almost get killed or miss my transit connection. Commuting by motor vehicle (in my case, mostly motorcycle) builds frustration and stress. But the bicycle takes 45 minutes more each way, and the return commute - which is almost all uphill and in the dark - is just impractical in the winter.
I'd advocate we give up on the "huge suburban campus" model of offices that assumes everyone will arrive by motor vehicle that takes the freeway, and build more offices near residences, but I don't know if that kind of thing will ever happen.
Probably helps with feeling safe in traffic too, since you can keep up with the pace better when necessary and maintain that speed with less effort, leaving more energy and focus for looking out for other road users trying to kill you.
and, by sheer chance, the route from my home to work passed along several parks and riverside paths and pedestrian bridges that made it easy to travel long distances with only occaisional traffic worries.
The environmental angle is only one part of the story for bikes vs cars.
1. Cars make you fat. Or at least, they certainly don't help. A bicycle (or transit) commute serves double duty as a commute and as exercise.
2. Cars are damned deadly. Drivers kill an absurd number of people for absurd reasons. You'd have to be exceptionally unlucky to be killed by a bicyclist.
3. Cars are expensive. For everyone. Even electric cars. Roads don't maintain themselves and asphalt's durability doesn't have a difference between a 1 ton Tesla and a 1 ton Ford. Also, you need a lot more asphalt to handle the same capacity. And that's just the public cost.
4. Cars are still expensive. Amortize out the up front cost, the interest, excise taxes, registration fees, repairs, fluids/filters/brakes. Even electric cars have a significant annual cost.
I pay a lot of money for the privilege of being able to conveniently take public transit to work. I'd blame it on Atlanta, but honestly, there is nothing any city could do to make it convenient enough for me to take transit vs. just driving a car if I didn't really want to do it. I drive my car or take an Uber for literally everything that's not going to work or walking.
America is just so big and so spread out that cars are the default option. You can't compare America to Europe in this regard because European countries are each the size of one US state and have been around for centuries.
Their roads and buildings and stuff just scream "bike transport". Just try to convince a significant fraction of Americans to use bikes to get around. Never going to happen. Bikes are legit dangerous in the vast majority of US urban areas.
Sure the smaller European nations have great transit networks. So do the smaller and older US states.
The real reason the US doesn't do public transport or cycling well is the huge car industry. The countries that are most successful at this in Europe have almost no car manufacturing.
Articles like this are the cyclist equivalent of pro vegan propoganda. It's all doom and gloom and tilted towards a very extremist view with no room for other views or ways of life. Cycle only or you're killing the planet. Eat only plants or you're killing the planet.
How much coal is burned to make your bicycle frame? What about your tires? Were they shipped from somewhere else like China? It's not the same scale as building a car, but it's still not 0 impact.
These extreme cycling articles seem to be written mostly by single men who have nothing better to do than to commute to work. I'd hate to bicycle a weeks worth of groceries home for my 3 kids and wife.
Worse yet by far - I'd have to double my grocery bill because I'm cycling like a maniac. And groceries have the largest carbon footprint of anything you can do. Its arguably more carbon efficient to drive to work, even a few blocks, than walk or cycle and eat more.
Its foolish to argue. Just use less, recycle more, and we'll have to figure out macroscopic society-level solutions to energy to get out of this alive. Recycling aluminum cans will matter zero in the long run.
So, I'm very pro-bike, and definately agree that cycling is much, much better, on many, many dimensions than driving an electric car.
However, I feel this is a misleading and therefore counter-productive polemic that seeks to maximise the problems with other options, rather than rank them accurately. I can imagine the reaction of many is to throw their hands up and think "well, why even bother". The perfect is the enemy of the good and all that.
As a result, they seem to have thoughtlessly repeated a bunch of propaganda put about by people who oppose even the marginal gains of switching to EVs and renewable energy. It reminds me (to get needlessly political) of people who didn't vote for Clinton because "both sides are the same". Possibly they thought saying that was an effective way to use their political sway to push things in the direction they wanted, but it appears they overestimated their leverage, and so shot themselves in the foot.
71 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] threadThat’s heavily dependent on where you live, I think. I have a 40 minute commute to work.
Not that I think this is an answer for everyone. I certainly recommend it, but as in so many things, it is no panacea.
Oh I suppose you could argue about the environmental cost of producing the extra calories consumed by the cyclist. Growing and transporting that grass fed steak after all is going to require a whole lot of energy too. And not the clean kind. But you are still already operating at such a handicap, that there is no way a motorcycle, let alone a car, could compete.
On the other hand, unless the entire place is for bicycles only, what is the cost in human life for accidents caused by cycle-car interactions? Or the productivity cost for not showing up to work on rainy snowy days? I guess all you valley dwellers should probably cycle to work to save the planet for us all. We will applaud you from our AWD monstrosities here in the North East.
Electric bicycles are much lighter than 250 lb, and are definitely street legal.
You could also make a distinction between fully protected vehicles (two tons of steel around you in the form of a car) and not.
or these: https://www.google.com/search?q=board+track+motorcycle&tbm=i...
The real alternative to cars is better public transportation. Even cities with terrible weather can have great public transportation solutions. Cars are fine for rural areas, but no reason cities and suburbs shouldn't be re-engineered for bicycles and better public transport.
The human body is very efficient. I'd be extremely surprised if my 15 minute bicycle commute to work burned more than 100 calories on top of my BMR. There's just no comparison.
> I guess all you valley dwellers should probably cycle to work to save the planet for us all. We will applaud you from our AWD monstrosities here in the North East.
I'd link to icebike.org where they used to have pictures of people cycling in Chicago in winter and articles on suitable clothing and tires, but that domain got bought out and commercialized into some mountain bike advertising site.
ETA: Here you go: http://web.archive.org/web/19990221182354/http://www.enterac...
That's assuming you don't reduce other workouts to make up for it. So riding your e-bike to the gym defeats the purpose.
More like 0.25% to 0.5% into the edible parts of crop plants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency
You could say bicycles and vim are my favorite tools.
Uhh, you are not using the right metric.
Yes, humans take calories, and convert it to energy at a rate of 25%. But you aren't eating coal and turning it into energy.
The ways that humans turn sunlight into energy is that the sunlight hits plants, which gets harvested by humans, which gets fed to cows, and then get harvested, prepared, and transported to stores, and THEN it is consumed by humans.
I sincerely doubt humans are more efficient than cars, on a per energy basis.
There are some mitigating circumstances though. The biggie is that all of this food is, in theory, carbon neutral; plants require CO2 to grow. While obviously this does not apply to the tractors, trucks, cargo ships etc in the rest of the preparation chain, that goes for fossil fuels as well - and chances are the fossil fuels have had to come farther and undergo even more processing. Nor are the emissions of the supply chain intrinsic to the fuel: we could theoretically replace all those tractors with electric ones powered by solar etc...
The other factor is that we can exert a great deal of personal agency over the emissions content of the food we eat. Cows, which you mention, are particularly bad because, although carbon-neutral, they effectively turn CO2 into methane which is a far more potent greenhouse gas. But we don't have to eat cows. Or food from the other side of the world. You can even grow your own food if you really want. So human-powering things reclaims personal responsibility.
#anecdataisnotdata
> The human body is very efficient. I'd be extremely surprised if my 15 minute bicycle commute to work burned more than 100 calories on top of my BMR. There's just no comparison.
Also, biking is exercise, and we should all be getting some exercise daily. If bike commuting replaces some time you'd spend at the gym, the question of how much energy exercise consumes is irrelevant since you'll be using that energy either way. As others have mentioned, that can also save you the time of going to the gym in addition to the other benefits.
> I'd link to icebike.org where they used to have pictures of people cycling in Chicago in winter and articles on suitable clothing and tires, but that domain got bought out and commercialized into some mountain bike advertising site.
I live in Wisconsin and bike all winter. Some combination of fat tires, studded tires, and internal hub makes it easier. With my studded tires ice is basically a non-issue.
It's also easier to stay warm than you might expect. If you have any kind of jacket on your core can get hot really quickly while cycling. You do need decent clothing to protect your extremities.
Of course, biking has a bunch of other advantages: sport and exercise, unlimited range, transportability, not mentioning mountain biking etc.
However... As much as I'd love to just tell everyone to ride a bike to work, or the grocery store, or to drop off their kids, or whatever, the reality is that in most cities (especially US cities) a car is a requirement. City planners assumed everyone would have one, engineers overbuilt roads for them to the detriment of walking or biking, and businesses and residential areas are often far apart from each other.
In order to achieve a more efficient transportation system, we'll have to redesign and rebuild our cities, and that simply isn't a realistic short term goal. We should work on that, reset our standards, change our zoning laws, and encourage denser living spaces that are built for people instead of cars, but we have to recognize this will take decades.
So in the mean time, solar panels and an electric car DO have a material impact on carbon emissions, and I'd encourage everyone to begin that migration until such time as we live in cities that don't require cars.
It's not even inside our cities, getting between our cities is a complete mess. I'm ~15mi from the nearest big(2k pop+) city. There's zero buses that run these routes.
Getting to the large metro area? I'd burn 7 hours on the train for the same drive that takes me ~2.5 hours to go 150mi. When I have to travel into the office I literally can't make a day trip of it(train arrives at 12:30pm, leaves at 1pm) if I didn't use a car.
Steps in the right direction is the key.
Close. More like "rich white people had cars, rich white people control local zoning and planning decisions, ergo cities and suburbs were planned to accommodate those rich white people's cars, and then we all had to get one just to survive because density and infrastructure support dollars dropped to a point where other modes became unviable."
Isn't the point of the article that it has little real impact, because in most cases it shifts the CO2 production from the car to the power plant? How long will it take until most energy needs in North America are met by renewables?
change our zoning laws, and encourage denser living spaces that are built for people instead of cars, but we have to recognize this will take decades.
If we wanted, we could redesign our cities for public transit and walkability in short order. The fundamental problem is that most North Americans don't want the changes you propose, and that is why our CO2 footprint is three times the world average.
Power plants are a lot more efficient and better at managing pollution. Plus, the grids are trending towards greener sources.
That being said, this article conflates two different kinds of pollution from transport.
One category of pollution is immediately harmful to humans: lead, nitrous oxides (NOx), particulate, sulfur compounds, unburned and partially burned fuels, dust, carbon monoxide, and others like this.
Lead causes developmental issues. Particulates, NOx, dust, and partially burned fuels cause asthma and lung irritation. Sulfur compounds (in the automotive realm, primarily from diesel fuel) cause acid rain. Partially burned fuels and NOx lead to smog.
The other kind of pollution is not immediately harmful to humans: CO2. We should definitely control CO2, but we should also be very clear that these are very different things.
The first category has been greatly reduced, to the point where some cars leave behind "cleaner" air than they take in (excluding CO2). Claiming that cars are just as harmful as they ever were is incredibly disingenuous.
If every house ends up with a solar array and an equivalent of a Tesla Powerwall (other brands are available) then there won't be massive demand on the grid.
You don't have to fast-charge a Leaf. You can charge it overnight.
I pay for a "100% renewable" electricity tariff. Of course not all of the energy I draw is from renewables, but it is all reinvested in renewables.
If people continue to adopt EVs, adopt renewable tariffs, and adopt self-generation and self-storage, everything will be fine.
No, an EV is not as green as a bike. But have you ever tried getting furniture from IKEA 60 miles across country on a bike, with a baby and toddler in tow?
Disclaimer: avid cyclist (6 miles a day to commute) and EV driver since 2013.
With world wide effort, electrical connections spanning the globe, tropical countries selling solar power to colder regions, huge and cheap energy storage facilities, we could maybe achieve that, though I'm really rather rooting for fusion, which should be economically available in only a few decades.
[1] - http://www.withouthotair.com/
Some people have considered updating it with more recent figures:
https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/3/30/l6qcqgoedse1...
How? by lifting dust on the floor, aka airborne dust or particulate matter.
In cities with no street cleaning, this amounts to a large amount of pollution.
But most emissions may not come from cars, that distribution depends on the city.
Some cities allow wood fueled appliances, some cities allow burning trash, some cities have a strong industrial presence, some cities have coal thermal power plants, etc.
https://bicycleuniverse.info/bicycle-safety-almanac/
Given the prevalence of cars in the United States and the lack of protected bicycle lanes in many places, it is probably safer to go to where you want by car than by bike.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
https://archive.org/details/pubmed-PMC3831097
This is Spain, Denmark, and England, which might be safer than the US, but still some significant results. I'm also not sure if there are other studies that found the opposite--a systematic review would be nice.
Sure you end up as a fine mist of subatomic particles on half the trips you take to the casinos of Ceti Alpha 6, but per mile it beats everything...
I don't think people will start biking unless they like the activity but lots of people simply like to drive. The problem is that even those that like to ride (or would like) aren't being encouraged to do so. I'd rather focus on improving the biking infrastructure (make separated lanes, over and/or underpass bridges for big intersections, better public transit that allows to carry bikes on board) and improve the tax situation so I don't have to pay for car-only infrastructure even if I don't use it (car-only infrastructure costs such as building and maintaining freeways is mostly payed out of property taxes, not gas taxes). That way more people will feel safer to ride, feel like they are saving money while doing it and maybe even discover that they like it.
Street cycling - even with bike lanes - can be terrifying, especially for those without experience. In the urban environment cars, trucks, other bicyclists, pedestrians... all operate in a very unpredictable way that frequently forces you to make snap decisions that impact your safety directly. It's chaos, and it's very intimidating.
Even if the weather cooperates and the distance is reasonable. If it is dark and raining it feels miserable and dangerous.
I totally agree that when I can bicycle to work, I arrive in a much better mood, assuming I didn't almost get killed or miss my transit connection. Commuting by motor vehicle (in my case, mostly motorcycle) builds frustration and stress. But the bicycle takes 45 minutes more each way, and the return commute - which is almost all uphill and in the dark - is just impractical in the winter.
I'd advocate we give up on the "huge suburban campus" model of offices that assumes everyone will arrive by motor vehicle that takes the freeway, and build more offices near residences, but I don't know if that kind of thing will ever happen.
much cheaper
healthier (building muscle, cardio)
less stressful
more fun
greener for the planet in terms of carbon
greener for the city in terms of poisonous gasses
less likely to kill a child on my way to work
save time by combining excercise with commute
avoid parking hassles
and, by sheer chance, the route from my home to work passed along several parks and riverside paths and pedestrian bridges that made it easy to travel long distances with only occaisional traffic worries.
1. Cars make you fat. Or at least, they certainly don't help. A bicycle (or transit) commute serves double duty as a commute and as exercise.
2. Cars are damned deadly. Drivers kill an absurd number of people for absurd reasons. You'd have to be exceptionally unlucky to be killed by a bicyclist.
3. Cars are expensive. For everyone. Even electric cars. Roads don't maintain themselves and asphalt's durability doesn't have a difference between a 1 ton Tesla and a 1 ton Ford. Also, you need a lot more asphalt to handle the same capacity. And that's just the public cost.
4. Cars are still expensive. Amortize out the up front cost, the interest, excise taxes, registration fees, repairs, fluids/filters/brakes. Even electric cars have a significant annual cost.
America is just so big and so spread out that cars are the default option. You can't compare America to Europe in this regard because European countries are each the size of one US state and have been around for centuries.
Their roads and buildings and stuff just scream "bike transport". Just try to convince a significant fraction of Americans to use bikes to get around. Never going to happen. Bikes are legit dangerous in the vast majority of US urban areas.
Sure the smaller European nations have great transit networks. So do the smaller and older US states.
[1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-33.... [2] https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-urban-population-w...
The real reason the US doesn't do public transport or cycling well is the huge car industry. The countries that are most successful at this in Europe have almost no car manufacturing.
How much coal is burned to make your bicycle frame? What about your tires? Were they shipped from somewhere else like China? It's not the same scale as building a car, but it's still not 0 impact.
These extreme cycling articles seem to be written mostly by single men who have nothing better to do than to commute to work. I'd hate to bicycle a weeks worth of groceries home for my 3 kids and wife.
Its foolish to argue. Just use less, recycle more, and we'll have to figure out macroscopic society-level solutions to energy to get out of this alive. Recycling aluminum cans will matter zero in the long run.
However, I feel this is a misleading and therefore counter-productive polemic that seeks to maximise the problems with other options, rather than rank them accurately. I can imagine the reaction of many is to throw their hands up and think "well, why even bother". The perfect is the enemy of the good and all that.
As a result, they seem to have thoughtlessly repeated a bunch of propaganda put about by people who oppose even the marginal gains of switching to EVs and renewable energy. It reminds me (to get needlessly political) of people who didn't vote for Clinton because "both sides are the same". Possibly they thought saying that was an effective way to use their political sway to push things in the direction they wanted, but it appears they overestimated their leverage, and so shot themselves in the foot.