
Driving a "Green car" vs cycling - frabbit
http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2017/09/business-as-usual-by-driving-green-car.html
======
d1zzy
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.

~~~
ianai
I wish I worked where I could shower and change there.

~~~
bryanlarsen
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.

------
sxates
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.

~~~
ced
_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.

~~~
Carioca
> 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?

Power plants are a lot more efficient and better at managing pollution. Plus,
the grids are trending towards greener sources.

------
csours
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.

------
Steltek
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.

------
IgorPartola
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.

~~~
npsimons
> 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.

ETA: Here you go:
[http://web.archive.org/web/19990221182354/http://www.enterac...](http://web.archive.org/web/19990221182354/http://www.enteract.com:80/%7Eicebike/)

~~~
stale2002
> The human body is very efficient.

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.

~~~
dTal
You are quite correct.

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.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
One issue is that in the United States, bicycle fatality for mile traveled is
around 3-10x worse than for cars.

[https://bicycleuniverse.info/bicycle-safety-
almanac/](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.

~~~
Rebelgecko
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

~~~
lkbm
[http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d4521](http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d4521)

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/485349)

[https://archive.org/details/pubmed-
PMC3831097](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.

------
ZeroGravitas
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.

------
vinceguidry
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.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
More than 60% of the US population lives in cities[1], 80% lives in urban
areas[2].

[1] [https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-
releases/2015/cb15-33....](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-
releases/2015/cb15-33.html) [2] [https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-
urban-population-w...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-urban-
population-what-does-urban-really-mean/1589/)

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.

------
EngineerBetter
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.

~~~
EngineerBetter
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.

~~~
xyzzyz
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.

[1] - [http://www.withouthotair.com/](http://www.withouthotair.com/)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
That reference is pretty out of date now.

Some people have considered updating it with more recent figures:

[https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/3/30/l6qcqgoedse1...](https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/3/30/l6qcqgoedse1wmjjz87t09usoq6jva)

~~~
xyzzyz
Yes, this is interesting and worthwhile, but doesn't really change the crux of
his argument.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I'm not sure you're honouring his memory or his work by suggesting that the
numbers that he based his conclusions on changing isn't important.

~~~
xyzzyz
No, I'm suggesting that the updates to his estimates are small enough to not
affect his overall conclusion.

------
Karrot_Kream
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.

~~~
jacquesm
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.

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fallingfrog
Ow. This article is kind of a gut punch.

------
clarkbw
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.

------
partycoder
Even a car that produces no emissions would still pollute.

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.

~~~
Franciscouzo
Isn't most of the dangerous dust particles a by-product of car emissions? I
don't think dirt would that dangerous anyway (obviating asthma).

~~~
partycoder
Most comes from emissions, yes.

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.

------
empath75
> Most journeys made by motor vehicle are short enough that they could instead
> be made by human power.

That’s heavily dependent on where you live, I think. I have a 40 minute
commute to work.

~~~
taeric
The time is a misleading metric. My commute is easily in the twenty minute
timeframe by car, but also only twenty minutes by bike.

Not that I think this is an answer for everyone. I certainly recommend it, but
as in so many things, it is no panacea.

------
garyrichardson
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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
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.

~~~
fjsolwmv
A reminder of the existence of obseity, diabetes, and bicycle motors exposed
the force of this argument.

