CO2 Is A Greenhouse Gas, Not A Sin You Commit In Your Heart

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A bicyclist wrote to Washington state representative Ed Orcutt (R) about a new bike tax that’s been proposed as part of a larger transportation package, seemingly for no other reason than to soothe the morons who think they’re being oppressed by those icky bicyclists with their environmental sensitivity and strengthened cardiovascular systems. The constituent felt, and I agree, that for the sake of the environment, cars should be taxed more to pay for bicycle infrastructure, because we should be encouraging people to get out of cars and onto bikes if they can. Orcutt, it turns out, is one of those bike-hating morons, because this is what he replied with in email:



To quote Stephen Webster from right here at Raw Story:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that each passenger vehicle in the U.S. generates on average 4.8 metric tons of CO2 every year, not accounting for emissions resulting in damage to the vehicle and local infrastructure, along with the actual production of fuel. The European Cyclists Federation, however, puts CO2 emissions from biking at about 10 times less than driving a car (PDF), even after accounting for the emissions required to make the bike and emissions linked to food the rider eats to power the device.

Emphasis mine, because the numbers only even are that low if you consider as “fuel” the food the bicyclist eats. Doing that is unnecessarily generous, because the reality is that bicyclists almost certainly do not eat more that average car-bound Americans. They just burn off more of the calories they consume. Considering how many more calories Americans consume than they used to, they have it to burn. As someone who used to get around primarily by bike when I lived in Texas, I can assure you that it didn’t really impact how much I ate, though it probably meant I spent less time worrying about it.

What makes this story interesting is Orcutt apologized, and his apology may be even dumber than his weird belief that the slightly greater CO2 emissions of someone who is meeting CDC-recommended minimums for cardiovascular exercise somehow hurts the environment more than a car.

Although I have always recognized that bicycling emits less carbon than cars, I see I did a poor job of indicating that within my e-mail. My point was that by not driving a car, a cyclist was not necessarily having a zero-carbon footprint. In looking back, it was not a point worthy of even mentioning so, again, I apologize – both for bringing it up and for the wording of the e-mail.

It’s not the dishonesty—remember, he said that bikes create more CO2 than cars, and denying that is idiotic since we have it in writing—because bald-faced lying is just par for the course with politicians like him, especially on the issue of greenhouse gases, where every word out of conservative mouths is a lie. It’s the part I highlighted. You see this kind of all-or-nothing thinking with conservatives a lot. (Which is why they insist, against all evidence to the contrary, that Michelle Obama insists that occasional treats are forbidden in the diet she’s supposedly forcing on Americans, and therefore claim she’s a “hypocrite” if she eats an occasional treat.) My theory is that they don’t really understand concepts like harm reduction or conservation or choosing your battles, because they’re so steeped in the language of “sin” that they can’t think of any issues outside of personal moralizing.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/08/co2-is-a-greenhouse-gas-not-a-sin-you-commit-in-your-heart/

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1. Ironically, even this well-intentioned story misses the point.

The cyclist, and the food he eats, and the CO2/methane he emits, is part of the existing above-ground carbon cycle.

The gasoline that the car burns has not been part of the Earth's terrestrial carbon cycle for millions of years.