Comments for Ask the EcoGeek: Walking Worse than Drivng? NO! at http://www.ecogeek.org , comment 1 to 24 out of 20 comments http://www.ecogeek.org Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:48:46 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4478 I see how lawyers make their money. LOL. No wonder we can't make the world a better place! With two sides to every story and everyone justifying their side, what you believe has to come down to old fashioned common sense and an understanding of good vs. evil. I mean the forest for the trees has to be on fire in your frontyard as you walk out the front door of your house and then maybe you'll see the truth. False justification extends to all aspects of life. All I can do is do what I think is best for myself, the community and the environment and then let my conscience be my guide. - Lena Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:40:32 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4466 (it was the formatting in some references I wanted to include...) * Vegan diets healthier for planet, people than meat diets [url]http://www-news.uchicago.edu/releases/06/060413.diet.shtml[/url] * Meat and the Environment [url]http://www.goveg.com/environment.asp[/url] My apologies for including such a biased piece... but it makes the point about how much land grazing cattle use and how much food they consume. - Fred S. Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:25:00 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4465 (sorry to break this up, I'm having trouble with the blog software telling me my message is "too short"!) Now, I've been a vegetarian and then dietary vegan for the past 4-5 years, so of course I say that. But hear me out: Saying it's hard to be a vegetarian is sortof like saying it's hard to own a hybrid car, etc...: it is hard at first -- you have to change your lifestyle in some way, do something new; but then, you spend less money at the pump (meat is expensive), you pollute the world less (meat production is CO2 intensive), you don't destroy as many rain forests (beef grazing is land-intensive) and you are healthier (meat-heavy diets are generally accepted as less healthy). Try this for a rationale: We developed to be omnivores -- we eat everything from fruits and vegetables to big cattle and buffalo. But our bodies have not evolved to do this well (we don't have well-suited teeth, claws, muscles, or digestive systems for carnivore living) -- it's our intelligence and tools that have. We simply can't kill cows with our bare hands, we need the axe and the spear. We've adapted because adapting in these ways helped us survive in pre-metropolitan times. Well, now we live sedentary lives and don't have half the demands of calories for survival: we store away the extra calories to obesity! Now-a-days, our survival into the future may well depend on ditching the inefficient meat industries in favor of the far more efficient and less polluting grains and local fruits & vegetables. [quote]"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." -- Albert Einstein[/quote] - Fred S. Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:19:59 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4464 Hun Boon, I respectfully disagree! I empathize with the situation for local food in Singapore: metropolitan living demands a certain "division of labor" in the food system. But there's still a difference, for you, between Thai rice and Columbian bananas (I'm sure I don't know much about the food market in Southeast Asia...). However, your point about vegetarians is dead wrong, in my opinion. - Fred S. Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:16:43 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4463 I couldn't agree with you more, Andrew! I think the author does make his point clear in the beginning, and it's very unfair to get stuck on his clever headline (it was clever -- we all read it, didn't we?) and miss the point of the article for it. He's not actually saying we should drive instead of walk for all these reasons -- I hope that that is obviously ludicrous. He's actually making a pretty well-put piece about how much carbon our food industry produces. This has been reported on before, especially in a big Time magazine piece this spring: * "51 Things you can do: A Global Warming Survival Guide" [url]http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/environment/article/0,28804,1602354_1603074_1603171,00.html[/url] - Fred S. Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:57:24 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4431 Hi, I'm from Singapore and it's one of the many places which is not self-sufficient in food. We have to import from other countries. So I don't understand this constant urging to eat locally. Even for food exporting countries like USA, you have to accept that not all regions produce all the foods necessary for a balanced diet. On a related note, to go vegan for green reasons is not feasible for most people: I do believe we've evolved to be omnivores for a reason. - Hun Boon Wed, 15 Aug 2007 07:45:40 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4354 For a site that I had come to respect in many ways and had considered writing for, it profoundly saddens me that the point of this article could be so utterly missed. I quote from the second paragraph of the times article , "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 point here is a simple one and espoused very early on in the article. Our food system and in fact our very ideas about food are one of the top causes of carbon emissions and climate change. The idea that we should have food from around the globe at our fingertips all throughout the year has created a market where, as the author states, more energy is used to create the food, the infrastructure to transport it, and then transport it and refrigerate it all the way than is used to create and drive a car to the grocery store. The calculation is an easy one, really. You burned how much gas to get to the store? The average American food travels 1300 miles to get to the store. You want to include your car's manufacturing costs into the picture? Then add in the fleet of boats, trucks, and planes built specifically to transport your food quickly to the store. The moral of this story is to buy and eat locally. And if you are worried that point might be missed because of sensationalist headlines of the Times, then the story written in response should address that issue and try to clarify the point. It shouldn't simply from up righteous anger and resentment, and then counter with misleading information of its own. What good is it to dismantle the propaganda of one side only to have your supposed beneficiaries react with propaganda of their own? - Andrew Mon, 13 Aug 2007 13:32:14 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4350 Here is the greenest engine every built (fuel efficient and powerful), download the video and watch. http://bourkeengine.net/videoclips.htm Who can help? I can provide more information. - Gil Mon, 13 Aug 2007 02:11:57 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4303 In response to Christopher- [i]...statistics and the scientific method can produce results and forecasts that seem illogical and counterintuitive.[/i] Therein lies their value. The scientific method and statistics is not at fault in this article. It's the fact that science is done badly. It's important that readers learn to discriminate between good and poor science, rather than being skeptical about all scientific studies. - Larkspur Sat, 11 Aug 2007 19:37:58 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4278 [i]Laura, re-read the sentence you quoted from the article. Nowhere does he say that organic cows produce more methane than regular cows. He says that they produce more methane per litre. This shouldn't be surprising, as most organic farming yields less produce compared with the inputs - the benefits are measured elsewhere.[/i] A broad-brush statement that is not always true. [i]I think most of the readers of the article missed the most important point. It's not that the author actually thinks that walking is bad. What you should take away from this piece is that statistics and the scientific method can produce results and forecasts that seem illogical and counterintuitive. Therefore, you should be sceptical about any scientific study. They may be based on science, but scientists are still humans. They're fallible and have ulterior motives just like the rest of us.[/i] What most people SHOULD take away from that and what most people WILL take away from that is an important difference, since only the latter really matters. What people WILL take away from it is the bald-faced idiocy that cars are better for the environment than walking. Trumping up a completely foolish set of numbers (a 36-fold emissions factor for beef, a 100% beef diet, not accounting for indirect emissions from using vehicles, etc) does absolutely nothing to demonstrate the value of skepticism. All it does is demonstrate the marginal value of "shocking" statements for the sake of getting a couple of extra books sold and pushing the agenda of Rupert Murdoch. [i]Which is all a long way of saying that global warming fanatics are just as suspect as any other fanatics.[/i] Your ridiculous bias is now exposed, since the generalized statement you made about skepticism has absolutely no logical or specific relevance to this piece. Have fun in Denial Land, along with all the other dead-enders. - pip Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:43:57 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4276 Meant to say, you would need to count the hidden carbon costs to power the market, AND BUILDING all...., as well as TRANSPORTATION... - Don Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:16:12 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4275 If you count the hidden carbon costs of the car, you also need to count the hidden carbon costs of power the market, all the farm equipment, all the processing equipment, as well as transporting the food from the farm to the processor to the market. Comparing simply walking or driving to the cow is about as simple as one could go in my opinion. Otherwise, you leave yourself open to holes like the original story. - Don Fri, 10 Aug 2007 19:05:31 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4271 Laura, re-read the sentence you quoted from the article. Nowhere does he say that organic cows produce more methane than regular cows. He says that they produce more methane per litre. This shouldn't be surprising, as most organic farming yields less produce compared with the inputs - the benefits are measured elsewhere. I think most of the readers of the article missed the most important point. It's not that the author actually thinks that walking is bad. What you should take away from this piece is that statistics and the scientific method can produce results and forecasts that seem illogical and counterintuitive. Therefore, you should be sceptical about any scientific study. They may be based on science, but scientists are still humans. They're fallible and have ulterior motives just like the rest of us. Which is all a long way of saying that global warming fanatics are just as suspect as any other fanatics. - Christopher Fri, 10 Aug 2007 16:37:37 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4269 You've got to factor in all the calories you burn getting worked up and yelling at those morons driving all the other cars on the road. :P - Albert Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:52:16 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4268 Articles like this one remind me of the sociological theory that ice cream causes murder... We all know this isn't directly true, but the way people(particularly the press) have learned to twist words and statistics simply for the fear factor is getting to be obscene. "Organic dairy cows are worse for the climate. They produce less milk so their methane emissions per litre are higher" Did that segment catch anyone else's attention? Was it just me, or was the writer implying that organic dairy cows cut the cheese(produce more methane gasses) more than non-organic dairy cows? One word: HA! - Laura H. Drapac Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:10:33 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4267 Well, maybe the original author wants people to remain couch potatoes for now. And then write another book about exercising and the dangers of a sedentary life to profit on the same audience again. - Carlos Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:00:53 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4265 You don't even have to calculate anything to prove that the author of that article is completely wrong. Just take a look at some of the worlds most polluted cities. Where does a large percentage of the pollution come from??? Cars. - Chris Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:26:49 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4249 at the end of the article there says some things that are supposed "green myths" some of them i agree with. however, the last one says that planting trees is actually bad since it has found that they produce methane too... what do you think about that? I think Rupert Murdoch thrives on sensationalism and bashing anything progressive. Good thing this "Green" candidate is willing to be a useful idiot for that kind of agenda. - pip Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:59:25 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4247 Sounds like the author of that article is encouraging couch potatoes to continue to become couch potatoes. Wondering whether he's just looking for excuses to not exercising. ;D - GC Fri, 10 Aug 2007 03:00:45 +0100 http://www.ecogeek.org/ask-the-ecogeek/867#comment-4245 at the end of the article there says some things that are supposed "green myths" some of them i agree with. however, the last one says that planting trees is actually bad since it has found that they produce methane too... what do you think about that? - andrea Fri, 10 Aug 2007 01:44:47 +0100