Go Green: Drive Everywhere.

Live a Low-Carbon Life.  Runover Bicycles.

Driving produces less carbon dioxide than walking.  Like usual, I’m making a bold claim.  My personal hero, Carl Sagan, coined the refrain, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  This is why I nearly plagiarized my title from the blog that reported the NY Times article .

Here’s how it works: If you need to pop down to the store which is say, 3.0 miles round trip, walking will burn enough calories that drinking a glass of milk to replenish them will cause more CO2 to be emitted than if you drove a reasonably efficient car. 

The Times’ article cites a study done by Chris Goodall, a member of the British green party; he is an envirojunkie and author of the book How to Live a Low-Carbon Life.  If Kyoto and the IPCC have taught us anything, it’s how meticulous these people claim to be with their research.  This is why I stole their graphic to your left.  In fact, The Pacific Institute, an environmental activist group, concluded that his facts actually check out.  Indeed a beefy study, applying every last dose of fertilizer and gust of cow flatulence.

It kinda backfired on Goodall’s agenda because his only point was that ruminant foods are more carbon-intensive.   He was chastised enough to rebut in his blog that no matter how you source the numbers, his conclusion still holds true.  He appears to be a stand up guy, no apologies when liberals deride him for ‘encouraging’ driving.  Of course not, there’s bigger fish to fry.  I say, let them give up heat before they lay scorn on my twin-turbo SUV.  Let them AMtrak to Florida  before sharing my lane.  Our ideaologies may differ slightly but when it comes to science, we must all agree on one thing.  The truth.

This is where PacIns picks up the fight, running around the truth while side-stepping the point with hymns like: Eat only what you grow and you can run to work and still be more efficient than than not going at all.  Or, the average American eats this and drives that, much different from the Brits, so sell your car.

The trolls pop up too, who think they’re so goddamn smart with mutterings like, “No one ever adds in CO2 in mining, smelting, and building cars.  I looked it up and its like 8 times worse and you forgot maintaining the roads too, duh.”  Helpful information for sure, except the study denotes driving instead of walking, not buying a car and then not using it.  Its only about people who already have cars rendering their point moot, but thanks.

Leaving only me to defend, much unloved by the media, the car.  I think its reasonable to say, if you aren’t picking your own food, there’ll be a tractor involved.  There’s also a delivery truck which needs maintained roads and loves high sulfur diesel.  Diesel or gasoline?  Your choice.   Also, if you’re a jogger (the healthy thing to be, i heard), I never met one who didn’t shower afterwards.  That’s a few extra showers a week plus a load of wash.  Does the average American have solar powered hot water?  How many never use a dryer?   Now we might be at eight times better for the car.  Or nine.

This is like capitol punishment or euthanasia, we can debate forever and only more absurd will the rebuttals become: 

Activist: The car will wear out its tires, those are carbon intensive. 
     Inactivist: Sneakers are worse. 

Activist: Fat Americans don’t need to replace as many calories. 
     Inactivist: Igneous rocks are formed from magma, equally not applicable to the article.

Activist: You’re contributing to pollution because more than CO2 comes out of a car.
     Inactivist: Offset by your contribution to the breakdown of the American family from the commuting hours you don’t spend with your neglected children.

Activist: You didn’t add in extra medical costs for outta-shape drivers.
     Inactivist: True.  Fortunately, the pedestrian has no safety cell and will die in most accidents whereas a car will save your life thus burdening Medicare.  Hence, the best and only green aspect of an environmentalist’s  world.  Their timely death.

Activist: Driving burns calories too, this is false math.
Activist: Cold starts are 100x less efficient, this is bad science.
Activist: Forget Walking.  Bicycling is 117% more efficient.

     Me: Carpool! Motherfuckers.

Carpool is one of those great words like nuclear power, its kryptonite to the tofu troublemakers.  No effective rebuttal exists.  A typical car holds five people.  You’d have to work out of your basement, never breed, eat your lawn, and drink rain to come close to the lifestyle efficiency of carpooling vs. non-driving.

Bicycleuniverse dot something has a handy doohicky.  I set it here for a yearly commuting consumption of the average American male with a median efficiency and a Ford Focus.  The Focus’ EPA estimates aren’t quite the actual 40mpg I got when I drove down that road in the video for 3 miles at 30mph with no stop signs.  That’s why they’re called estimates.  And don’t balk about unfairness with my car already being warmed up because, let’s note:  Non-drivers are at max capacity here.  If you walk or bike with friends it’ll be Tour de France levels of pollution.

I’m not advocating the do-nothing attitude towards environmental complacency.  I’m stressing the dangers of confusing morality with efficiency and avoiding ‘common sense’ victimization duping us into false conservations that actually hurt the planet.  We thought we were so green picking paper over plastic.  We were wrong.

So what’s our conclusion with driving alone versus walking/biking?  The point is that at worst, it’s that close!  We should extrapolate this as moral responsibility to run-over any people or bicycles on a road without a marked path.  Or at least have your passenger whack them in the back of the head with your owner’s manual for their ignorance. 

You’ll also get home 10 times faster (provided you’re talented enough to snake your way past those yellows) which means more time with your children, making drivers better parents.  And remember, a chained-up curbside bicycle is legally trash.  Or eBay fodder as I like to call it.

P.J. O’Rourke once said, “A certain childishness is, no doubt, excusable.  But going about in public with one’s head between one’s knees and one’s rump protruding in the air is nobody’s idea of acceptable behavior…Can such people be trusted?  Is a person with so little self-respect likely to have any respect for you?”

Nevertheless, its not really a bold claim, is it?  To the educated it’s merely, specious.

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