I'll bet those of you who are still worried about your "personal carbon footprint" and your impact on global warming have decided that it might be better to walk to the shops rather than drive. After all, you'd be saving all that fossil fuel, wouldn't you?
In a stunning piece of lateral thinking, researchers in the UK decided to look at how much carbon is produced making the human fuel that feeds you. *
What does that have to do with driving? Well when you walk, you use the human fuel you get from your food, and growing that human fuel generated a carbon footprint so large that the extra human fuel you use walking to and from the shops creates MORE carbon than the fuel you burn in your car.
And that doesn't take into account the additional respiration which creates its own carbon problem.
The message? Drive, don't walk. You're helping the environment.
(*The article was published in the New Scientist in July)
4 comments:
Here in LA, we knew it all along. We drive to the store a block away because it's better for the environment, not because we're incapable of leaving our cars.
I'm thinking a nice combo of driving & walking will do Mr Brown & I.
You can add Freeman Dyson to the list of intelligent skeptics (or heretics as he says).
Thanks for the report, Chester. Now I feel alot better about sitting in front of the TV all day and neither driving nor walking anywhere. It's my way of taking care of mother earth...
Post a Comment