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by tonyedgecombe 1711 days ago
>It is not even close to "waste", it is saving the planet in maximum comfort.

It's less wasteful than the ICE equivalent but in no way can it be described as saving the planet. If you are really serious about saving the planet then you buy a bicycle.

1 comments

>If you are really serious about saving the planet then you buy a bicycle.

bicycle is 100miles/kwh. Human body is 25% efficient, so it is just 25 miles/kwh for the energy coming in the food - so for all the bicycle disadvantages (low speed, open to elements, no meaningful cargo capacity) it is only meager 10x difference with that 2+ tons BMW i4 (and only 7x difference with my Prius Plugin).

The kwh in human food is much dirty than kwh for electric car, especially when electricity comes from renewables. The food requires tremendous expenditure of energy to produce it as well as it causes tremendous impact on the planet ecosystem due to agriculture.

I think the implied assumption is that you don't spend 6 hours a day riding the bike you just bought. Though conveniently, the obesity rates are high enough that even this wouldn't require an increase in calorie intake in the top polluting countries and would in fact be an overall improvement to national health. And you'd still produce much lower emissions.

On a sidenote, >10% of conventional fuel is made via agriculture, and seemingly around 5% of electricity production in the US, 10% in EU28[1].

[1] https://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/europa/751...