By “we”, Justine Calma at The Verge means “you”. Most Warmists won’t give up their own use of fossil fueled travel
To fight climate change, we need to start biking like the Dutch
Universal cycling could slash one-fifth of CO2 emissions from cars, study finds
If people around the world were as enthusiastic cyclers as they are in the Netherlands, we could cut an impressive amount of planet-heating pollution. The Dutch use bicycles to get around more than folks in any other country, cycling about 2.6 kilometers (1.62 miles) a day.
If that was the trend across the world, it would slash 686 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution a year, according to the authors of a new study published this week in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. That’s enormous — roughly equivalent to erasing one-fifth of CO2 emissions from passenger cars globally in 2015.
Cleaning up pollution from transportation is a huge piece of the puzzle when it comes to slowing down the climate crisis that’s causing more brutal heatwaves, droughts, fires, and storms. Transportation currently makes up a quarter of fuel-related greenhouse gas emissions globally, with half of that coming from passenger cars.
Replacing those gas-guzzlers with electric vehicles gets a lot of media attention as a sure-fire way to keep the climate crisis at a more manageable level. But that transition is happening slowly, and it doesn’t go far enough in reimagining a more sustainable future for transportation.
See? They’ve already moved on from EVs and want Everyone Else to be forced to ride a bike. Hey, biking makes sense in certain areas, and, people are welcome to do it IF THEY WANT TO AS THEIR OWN CHOICE. Notice how few Warmists in hardcore liberal areas like NYC give up their own use of fossil fuels and ride bikes. Of course, it’s not as easy when you have to drag the bike up and down the stairs/elevator. Where do you leave it at the store or work, especially with the increased amount of crime? Many American cities just aren’t set up for biking.
The difference in the Netherlands and similar countries like Denmark, where there were high rates of owning and using a bike to get around, the paper says, often boils down to culture and environment. Bicycling might be seen as more dangerous, the paper notes, in some places with high traffic death rates where cyclers might have to navigate through streets crammed with cars.
To get over those kinds of humps, the new paper calls for “worldwide pro-bicycle policy and infrastructure.” That might look like more protected bicycle lanes or strategies to overcome the world’s driving addiction through carbon taxes or congestion pricing.
And the government folks instituting this will put in methods to force people to bike, while the govt folks travel around in fossil fueled vehicles.
Read: Warmists Recommend Everyone Else Start Biking To Fight Hotcoldwetdry »