Meet Washington state legislator Ed Orcutt, Republican. He thinks bikers are bad for the environment.
This is from 2013, but it’s funny enough to be resurrected now.
Representative Ed Orcutt (R – Kalama) does not think bicycling is environmentally friendly because the activity causes cyclists to have “an increased heart rate and respiration.”
This is according to comments he made in an email to a constituent who questioned the wisdom of a new bike tax the legislature is considering as part of a large transportation package.
A bike tax does seem like an incredibly stupid idea. You want to encourage bikes, not tax them.
We spoke with Rep. Orcutt to confirm the email’s authenticity and to get further clarification.
“You would be giving off more CO2 if you are riding a bike than driving in a car,” he said. However, he said he had not “done any analysis” of the difference in CO2 from a person on a bike compared to the engine of a car (others have).
“You can’t just say that there’s no pollution as a result of riding a bicycle.”
Here’s that email he sent to the constituent.
I laughed a lot, thereby giving off more CO² than the cruise ship that just chugged away from here.
You do give off more CO2 by bicycling than, say, standing still. But I ran the numbers myself some years ago because I was curious. These are very (very very very) back of the envelope numbers, but you’d have to have a car that got 500 mpg before you were competing with a bicyclist for fuel efficiency.
It’s been a long time since I did the calculation, but if I remember correctly, the big problem wasn’t so much the efficiency of the engine vs. the efficiency of the bicyclist. Rather, it’s all that extra weight in the car that has to be moved around.
We prefer to be called bicyclists instead of bikers. Or just cyclists. Bicycling is so far off most people’s radar that when you say biker they assume you mean someone on a motorcycle.
It’s an old un-favourite. It shows once again that there is no end to the depths of stupidity in some people.
I have no doubt he cried foul when Emma Way was arrested in England for running over a cyclist.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2510407/Its-tough-ME-Woman-driver-tweeted-bloody-cyclists-knocking-man-bike-complains-SHE-victim-online-bullies.html
People need to stop having sex. It leads to heavy breathing, too.
And people like this Orcutt dude need to get out of politics. The amount of hot air they generate is staggering.
Yeah, I assumed motorbikes as well.
And if you wanna show off your education, it’s <sub>, not <sup>.
I got thinking a bit about the carbon footprint of cycling a while ago; I do cycle to work now and then (at 28K, kinda a long haul, and annoyingly, I can’t fit the time in right now, due to other parental duty things, but I probably will be again in a week or two)…
What I was generally hearing (with the billion hedges/estimates you need to build in in our annoyingly complicated economies–and see one high-level estimate here): it’s almost always better to cycle (and I drive a Prius, which is pretty low impact, as cars go). But depends a bit on what you’re eating. Some foods, if you count transportation and the way they’re raised/grown, are pretty high impact, so probably, counting all that, you can wind up making more CO2 that way, but it would be an unusual meal…
… and, generally that would be because someone drove or flew the food to you, which you then ate, and when cycling, then burnt it to CO2. That last burn really wasn’t the problem (and note that that carbon, specifically, was pulled out of the atmosphere to make the food, at some point; it’s carbon effectively in a cycle). It was the stuff involved in moving the food, which, sadly, yes, generally isn’t in a cycle; that’s the stuff we’re pumping it out of the ground and burning. And, yes, some foods are otherwise a lot more carbon-intensive even to raise, since little of the carbon involved winds up even on your plate.
Also kinda amusingly, I guess: with gas prices where they are around here these days, I figure the calories probably usually wound up costing me about as much as the gas would have. But, of course, there are also a lot of other benefits to cycling. And I’m pretty sure none of this builds in the carbon impact of the healthcare system housing me years longer, if I don’t get some cardio somewhere, at least.
Went to the linked analysis article and followed its link to the full study. The study showed that cycling had a lower carbon footprint by a factor of 10 or more, and the study specifically said it did not include infrastructure and waste in its calculations. Imagine what the carbon footprint of the infrastructure required for motor traffic vs bicycle traffic must be.
trurl (#6) –
Even if road and bridge construction had the same design and cost, the cost of maintenance and repair would be miniscule.
Of course, you do have to factor in the fact that carbon is emitted in making the bicycle – but when compared with what it takes to make a car, including the mining of the ingredients for both, you still come out way ahead. Of course, when walking, you wear out more shoes! Yes, as an environmental science teacher, I hear them all….might as well drive, because you put out all that energy walking and biking…I hear it regularly. sigh.