There was an amusing article in the Times of London over the weekend: “Walking to the Shops Damages Planet More Than Going By Car.“ Here’s a selection:
“Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.
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 climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.”
I’ll admit, my first thought after reading this was: “Great! Americans are the fattest, most sedentary people on Earth. No one can accuse us of causing global warming anymore!” But, fortunately for my waistline, I gave the article a little more thought before I plopped down on the couch with a box of Oreos and liter of cola.
It seems to me that, even if this environmentalist’s calculations are correct, they article seems to miss the point. Carbon dioxide, after all, is a common gas, and every person on Earth exhales it thousands of times a day. There’s nothing wrong with a certain amount of carbon in the atmosphere - the problem comes when its concentration is driven to artificially high levels due to emissions from cars, factories, power plants, and other man-made sources.
My point is that it’s OK to release some carbon into the atmosphere, especially if it’s the by-product of food production. What we need to concentrate on are not silly studies that produce eye-grabbing headlines, but ways in which we can improve technology to reduce the carbon emissions that come from automobiles and factories. That is how we’re going to make meaningful reductions in emissions, not by staying in bed and getting fat.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Climate Change, Pop Culture . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 8th, 2007 at 6:06 am
I am a regular reader of your article. And I am very impress with your blog upon Global Warming. Now I am also write a blog upon effects and causes of Global Warming. This blog is collection of news & reviews like the study found that global warming since 1985 has been caused neither by an increase in solar radiation nor by a decrease in the flux of galactic cosmic rays. Some researchers had also suggested that the latter might influence global warming because the rays trigger cloud formation.
August 8th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
[...] [Source: Times of London via Terra Rossa] [...]
August 8th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
[...] [Source: Times of London via Terra Rossa] [...]
August 9th, 2007 at 4:53 am
The article does not miss the point at all. Government and nanny state types are notorious for the inability to understand the law of unintended consequences. Just what is the proper amount of CO2? Why is production of CO2 by breathing and eating OK, but producing less by driving (if the study is correct) not OK? Is the goal to reduce CO2 or our standard of living?
August 14th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Just what is the proper amount of CO2 ?
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284 ppm (the level in 1832). Today it is at 383 ppm and rising rapidly.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png