Walking ‘damages planet more than going by car’

[Evo]

Well, I thought I would start walking to the nearby stores instead of using the car to be more "environmentally friendly" and get some excersize at the same time. Turns out that walking is bad for the environment because the extra food consumed to offset the lost calories is worse for the environment than driving a car the same distance.

So, all you people that walk, bicycle or do any type of excersize need to stop now if you care about the planet.

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”

Mr Goodall, Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon, is the latest serious thinker to turn popular myths about the environment on their head.

Continued...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2195538.ece

 

[WarPhalange]

So it looks like we should all be in the Matrix. Just lying there, fed minimal amounts of other dead people as food and have machines do all the work.

Do you remember that story of the Hummer being more "green" than the Prius? That was a riot.

 

[arildno]

I was on a cloudberry hunt today out in the woods.
Evidently, I'm an environmental hazard..

 

[Evo]

I was on a cloudberry hunt today out in the woods.
Evidently, I'm an environmental hazard..

Shameful arildno!

 

[Archduke]

Now that's exactly what I do before I go on a 3 mile walk, eat 100g of beef...

Seriously, I'm sure you can argue for/against anything if you wanted to. Why does common sense seem to desert people whenever they talk about climate change?


Edit:

The Prius story reminds me of this http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/suv.png" .

 

[NoTime]

Common sense is sooooo uncommon.

Think of all the CO₂ you emit while breathing.
Simple solution, everyone stop breathing.
You're just addicted to that anyway.
The withdrawal effects only last a few minutes, after that no problems.

 

[B. Elliott]

Now that's an inconvenient truth!

(Can I get a Nobel Prize if I make a movie about it?)

 

[hypatia]

I quit breathing years ago..before it became popular

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Well that's not fair. Maybe we can just punish perverts for heavy breathing.

 

[turbo]

Well that's not fair. Maybe we can just punish perverts for heavy breathing.

Does that mean that I'll get CO2 credits for the times when people come near me wearing fragrances, and I seize up with asthma?

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Does that mean that I'll get CO2 credits for the times when people come near me wearing fragrances, and I seize up with asthma?

I suppose we could give you a medical dispensation if you can prove you aren't just panting after young ladies with nice perfume.

 

[rewebster]

Since the USA isn't the fattest country anymore, maybe its all those calories that have been burnt off that caused the global warming--plus all those who work out too much when they don't have to--that's a lot of CO2 from breathing during workouts --double whammy!


AMERICA---STOP WORKING OUT!

 

[Averagesupernova]

Can't we just find a way to adapt people to consume petroleum products? This way we bypass the whole food production energy intensive process.

 

[rewebster]

Can't we just find a way to adapt people to consume petroleum products? This way we bypass the whole food production energy intensive process.

isn't margarine just one molecule away from being plastic?--that would help if we could add that one molecule at a home based operation. now, just add bread and water...---

 

[Ivan Seeking]

If I walk to the store, will I really eat more, or will I simply make better use of what I eat? Do I help improve the environment by reducing waste products that need to be treated at the waste water plant?

What is the resting state power demand of the human body as compared walking? Do we simply add the energy for the walk to our resting state average, or is it more complicated than that?

Note that his point is not that we should drive instead of walk; in fact he specifically states that is not the case. The point is the high energy cost of food, and in particular, beef, dairy, and foods that ship great distances.

 

[rewebster]

I can't wait til I see a gallon of milk that says 'product of China'

 

[LowlyPion]

Picket the canned beans aisle?
Or at the least if you walk to the store instead of drive, don't go eating beans for the extra energy?

"Methane is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year period ..."
http://epa.gov/methane/

Classify retirement age villages as toxic vent sites too?

 

[Gokul43201]

Well, I thought I would start walking to the nearby stores instead of using the car to be more "environmentally friendly" and get some excersize at the same time. Turns out that walking is bad for the environment because the extra food consumed to offset the lost calories is worse for the environment than driving a car the same distance.

So, all you people that walk, bicycle or do any type of excersize need to stop now if you care about the planet.
Continued...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2195538.ece

The author says the carbon impact of driving was calculated from government reports on vehicle emissions. That's all?

1. What about the energy I expend by driving the car?
2. What about the carbon footprint involved in the manufacture of the car itself?
3. What about the carbon impact of the repairs and maintenance needed on the car from this additional usage?
4. What about the emissions from extra repairs and maintenance to the roadways that are needed as a result?
5. What about the emissions from having to maintain emergency and police units to deal with the extra traffic violations and accidents?
6. What about the extra emissions from having to maintain hospitals and staff to deal with the extra accidents?
7. What about the impact of feeding a legal system based on ambulance chasers on one end and politicians writing laws to curb ambulance chasing on the other?
8. What about the cost of maintaining a healthcare system (that's hospitals, staff, doctors, health insurers, insurance lawyers, their staff, etc.) to deal with all the gazillion health issues likely to thrive among couch potatoes?

Now how do these conpare with the costs of producing footwear, maintaining sidewalks, treating the extra sprains, twisted ankles and whatnot, providing for the retirement of people that won't just have an accident and die, dealing with the extra population from people not dying young, and other such factors?

I'll stop there, but I'm not going to believe this "calculation" until I've actually seen a calculation.

And furthermore, even the naive the argument for walking can not be extended to say, bicycling, because the latter is way more energy efficient.

 

[Evo]

The author says the carbon impact of driving was calculated from government reports on vehicle emissions. That's all?

Aside from it being intended as funny (by me)

2. What about the carbon footprint involved in the manufacture of the car itself?

You can't count that since we will assume that the person would have a car anyway.

Hey this is from the

Green Party parliamentary candidate

You aren't suggesting that someone from the "green" party wouldn't know what they're talking about!

http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news

I absolutely agree with you.

 

[Moonbear]

If I walk to the store, will I really eat more, or will I simply make better use of what I eat? Do I help improve the environment by reducing waste products that need to be treated at the waste water plant?

What is the resting state power demand of the human body as compared walking? Do we simply add the energy for the walk to our resting state average, or is it more complicated than that?

Note that his point is not that we should drive instead of walk; in fact he specifically states that is not the case. The point is the high energy cost of food, and in particular, beef, dairy, and foods that ship great distances.

Seems the answer is to walk to the farmer's market rather than the grocery store. Otherwise, if you're going to buy the same food whether you walk or drive to the store, how could it be worse to walk?

 

[Evo]

Seems the answer is to walk to the farmer's market rather than the grocery store. Otherwise, if you're going to buy the same food whether you walk or drive to the store, how could it be worse to walk?

MB got it.

We shouldn't be eating oranges from Peru in the summer. We shouldn't be eating beef from Argentina. That's were MCDonald's gets their beef, or at least that was true a few years ago when one of their meat distributors was a client of mine.

The overpriced grocery store near me has an entire section of their produce department set aside for local farmers. It also sells more imported foods than any other grocery store in the area.

In the summer, I buy my produce from a little old man that sets up a stand at a deserted street corner that was a few blocks from my old house. His produce is awesome and his prices are less than the store.

 

[LowlyPion]

Hey this is from the You aren't suggesting that someone from the "green" party wouldn't know what they're talking about!

http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news

I noted this from that link:
"Shan Oakes has set a new record for a Green by-election result, taking second place in Haltemprice & Howden with 7.4% of the vote. The result is another boost to the Greens' plans to win their first Westminster seats at the next general election, after the party beat Labour for the first time, a fortnight ago in Henley. The Greens' previous high in a by-election was 6.1% at Vauxhall in 1989."

They got beat 72% to 7.4%? That is quite some spin on things or else a sub-normal grasp of arithmetic. It took 20 years to do better? Ouch. That trend is not their friend.

 

[robertm]

I can't wait til I see a gallon of milk that says 'product of China'

That will be the day I buy a cow.

 

[Gokul43201]

You can't count that since we will assume that the person would have a car anyway.

That isn't enough. A walker's car will last longer than a non-walker's, so in effect, he would run through fewer cars in his lifetime.

 

[Gokul43201]

We shouldn't be eating oranges from Peru in the summer. We shouldn't be eating beef from Argentina. That's were MCDonald's gets their beef, or at least that was true a few years ago when one of their meat distributors was a client of mine.

Also, we shouldn't pick diets that are 100% beef or 100% milk. That appears to be a bad idea as well.

 

[WarPhalange]

Whoa, I just thought of something that blew my mind. If everybody ate 100g of beef today, that would be 6500 billion grams of beef, that's 6.5 billion kg of beef.

That's like a mountain of beef.

 

[Gokul43201]

That's like a mountain of beef.

It's really more like a hill.

 

[LowlyPion]

Whoa, I just thought of something that blew my mind. If everybody ate 100g of beef today, that would be 6500 billion grams of beef, that's 6.5 billion kg of beef.

That's like a mountain of beef.

Surely a mountain, but only a 1/10 as high as you might think.