The real impact of bike commuting on climate change 

It's important to acknowledge that cycling as a solution to climate change might not be feasible for all contexts. Factors such as weather, urban design, infrastructure, and accessibility can impact the ability of individuals to use bicycles as a primary mode of transportation. To fully harness the benefits of cycling for climate change mitigation, a comprehensive approach is needed, including investments in cycling infrastructure, public awareness campaigns, and policy support for sustainable transportation options. By reducing the demand for fossil fuels and promoting eco-friendly lifestyles, cycling can play a significant role in mitigating climate change and creating more sustainable communities. Keep using your channel to promote the change. Thanks.

I've seen a couple studies that find bikes are less efficient than ebikes given typical developed country food systems. I was surprised the studies here found ebikes used more energy. I wonder if that's because they were mostly European, which were all pedal assist and not throttle? Anyway, maybe something to explore in a future video?

Over five years now since I stopped using a car. 25 years since I last traveled by air. All my local travel is by bicycle, and each year I pick up several old bicycles at yard sales for near zero cost and then rehab them for other people to ride. .

There's also the question of induced demand. One person switching to a bike commute doesn't mean exactly one less car on the road. If there's less congestion, driving becomes more appealing and there will be more trips by car up to a certain point. That's why removing road capacity for cars including converting lanes from car lanes to bus-only, bike-only, and electric moped-only, and zoning car-free neighborhoods ought to be part of the solution, as well as other policy changes. As a bonus those bike-only lanes require a lot less road construction as bikes are much less heavy and wear much less on the pavement! Electric cars actually wear the pavement down faster because those battery packs are incredibly heavy, but it's not an issue with bikes and e-bikes.

Soooo like.. where did Calgary's emissions from food consumption go? Into thin air? I doubt it. Animal agriculture makes up about a third of worldwide emissions, do cities think it doesn't exist? I think we are truly lost in the wilderness of bad climate maths, having these conversations without ever discussing the difficult questions. Absolutely no chart showing analysis of any population's emissions should lack this information, in this day and age. How is it that we only show certain types of household consumption, but not others which have a far greater impact? Get out of your organisational silos and stop thinking purely in terms of infrastructure and how it's used inside of the city. Our consumption also begins outside of the city, where our food is grown, fed and killed.

Not just construction cost. Maintenance is ORDERS of magnitude lower for bike paths. There are dedicated bike paths in my city built in the late 90's, built with brick pavers, that to this day are as good to bike on as the day they were built. And these aren't recreational trails. These are paths that handle thousands of bikes every day. One path handled between 4000 and 5000 bikes per day, over 1 million per year, and was changed to a bicycle street a few years back because the path had become to narrow for that much two way bike traffic. So now bikes ride on the traffic calmed street and the bike path is now used as a pedestrian path. And the path is fine and didn't require any maintenance or construction at all, even after 25 years of use. The only points that create problems for bicycle paths are the points where motor traffic crosses them, and there they require as much maintenance as roads do. But it's not due to the bikes, but due to motor traffic... And there are many other factors that can be calculated into the low low cost of cycling infrastructure, and gains a city can make by building it. Just a few: More cyclists means less cars, this means less air and noise pollution, which means healthier cities. This reduces health care costs for the majority of citizens, and the city or government. More cyclists means less cars, which means more space available for public spaces and places to relax. This means less stress and this feeds back into the health benefits. But this also means more space for greenery which further reduces pollution, but which also reduces the heat island effect of cities. More greenery means cities heat up less in hot weather making them far more pleasant environments. This then also reduces AC usage during hot weather. And on top of that more greenery and green space allows for more water to infiltrate into the soil where it falls, leading to less water needing to be taken in by sewage and drainage systems, leading to less flooding during extreme rainfall. And it benefits the groundwater level too, allowing for more water to infiltrate. This in turn means less watering is needed during dry months to keep plants alive. Less cars and more cycling means more kids cycling. This gives kids an enormous freedom. Kids can then safely cycle to friends, family, school etc. And it is immensely empowering, and let's kids build independence. Otherwise they are stuck at home and rely on their parents to be able to go anywhere. As a kid I cycled everywhere as soon as I was in primary school, including school. And it gave me a huge level of independence and freedom from an early age on. I could go play with friends even if my parents were busy, I could go to school on my own, and so on. It is often forgotten, but what it does for kids is such a huge part of making cities and suburbs more bike and pedestrian friendly. And all this is not even taking into account cities with less cars in them are just generally much more pleasant environments to be in, to live in, to work in, to shop in, etc. And I could go on. Making cities more pedestrian and bike friendly has huge knock-on effects. The construction cost is just one factor, and not even a major one considering all the others... One study from the Netherlands I once read calculated that every euro invested in bike infrastructure actually creates a return for society of up to 8 euro, exactly because all these knock on effects are diverse, but when you add them up they really.... Add up...

​​​@@johanwittens7712can you create a YT video with your comment instead? A really nice summary of benefits of a city not dependant on cars. :)

​@@johanwittens7712, 100%. Less cement (repair and initial pouring) is huge--it releases so much CO2. Things I didn't see you mention are run-off (less flash flooding) and head island from lower parking needs, too. And also from air quality from brake/tire dust.

yes.. but most bike paths are made by sacrificing part of an existing street or parallel parking spaces.

This would probably be a difficult calculation, but the increased physical health of cycling versus a sedentary car-dependent life-style almost certainly has a calculable carbon impact. Or would living longer negate that?

Yes, I was gonna say ! Noise pollution and unsafe streets are way more important than we think. If kids can bike by themselves it means less parents by car to drive them therefore less cars on the road for example. Noise and air pollution are a stress for the body which will make people sicker.

I live off an arterial boulevard and you're absolutely right, during the peak of business hours the road is louder than a highway with all of the semi truck and industrial vehicle sounds. You can also smell the diesel if the wind is coming from the south. On the other hand, during the weekend or evenings it's a very very quiet roadway with only the occasional car passing by. It's almost a different living experience all together, and typically fresh air from the north blows the acrid smells away during the evening.

😆I live on a crescent off of a semi-major stroad in my city, and the people gunning their engines (up to the nearby red light) are the worst!

I was in Amersfoort, Netherlands one day and watched, fascinated, as moms went to pick up their kids from school. Everyone was on a bike. So quiet. No fumes from running cars. And the moms could catch up with one mother. It was magical.

Most big cities are on the coast. Unless we adapt they are going to be sea before too long. Its ironic how short term many are when protesting against cycling.

I was foreshadowing a future video 😉

@@Shifter_Cyclinghow many seats can you comfortably put on a bike? That hold can hold human in the seat?

Hauling a bakfiets on a folding bike would be more noteworthy...

Me at start of video: I've never heard of a tandem bike with seats that face each other and front rider riding backwards 🙂

@@jfmezei I have seen that, but only in circus ;)

As well world wide!!!

Wow, they could see Himalaya while they died of hunger because they could not make money to buy food. What a great advantage.

@@gerrysecure5874 you must be fun to hangout with

@@arekgalang5555 Great you enjoy truth and rationale thinking. Most hysterical idiots turn even more crazy and approach red face and cardiac arrest.

Smog used to be bad in Los Angeles, now the mountain are visible, yet there are more cars. 🤷🏿

Not to mention the land destroyed by oil drilling, or by mining for cobalt and other minerals for electric car batteries (which require hundreds more in terms of capacity than an e-bike). The land's ability to be a carbon sink is completely destroyed.

I will add in the land "use" for cars increasing the SPACING of housing / businesses and everything else causing MORE LAND use to "support" the same number of people a STROAD goes back to a road and 2 tower blocks PER block is built housing 200 people each AND having "local" stores at street level and toss in office towers and we have turned a linier slowly moving"car park" into a village

This! Shifter was bellow average even while driving and flying internationally several times - because he lives in a dense area only possible if some people give up their cars. So biking not only reduce your CO2, it also reduce the CO2 of everyone around you (even drivers). Driving does the exact opposite, causing everyone to exert more energy due to multiplying distances between destinations. Enabling denser cities is a top benefit of cycling.

You would expect CO2 levels to be rising. CO2 levels rise with an 800 year lag as temperatures rise. We are coming out of the Little Ice Age.

Add the material from brake pads...

Yeah it takes about 5-10 tons of CO2 to produce and ship a car to a customer. You can produce about 50-100 bicycles for that. A typical car has a weight of 1000-2000 kg and more complex components, while most bicycles are like 10-15 kg.

@T33K3SS3LCH3N yep and a regular bike is almost infinitely repairable, ship of Theseus style, whereas a cars will almost eventually always fail in some way that can't be fixed. I know people who are still using 1970s bike frames

Then don't ever get in an auto again. Ever.

@@mcbullitt I think we can admit that cars pollute without making them illegal, no?

They're REMOVING bike lanes?!

Wait wait. At a time where Montréal is adding bike lanes and spaces, god damn Vancouver is removing them?!!

I find it hard to believe that they are removing them. Surrey, for example, has abandoned painting any new lanes, which means that new lanes will separated/protected. This could mean that some lanes might be quieted with painted lines removed. This doesn't sound like reduced bike infrastructure, so maybe Vancouver is doing the same. @@josiahclagett7369

As a sovereign country, Canada has a sovereign currency it can create and destroy at will. At present, like NZ, Australia, USA, UK, Japan, they all use currency creation - fiat currency as a method of social and economic control. It's all a part of the rules based system of the USUK. It's worked well since the close of WW2 and for Britain since the East India Company. Why change it? Well it happens to be the cause of imperial empire and destruction of the biosphere on the living earth. We can't have it both ways. Anyway, looks like it's all coming to an end for the USUK EU in the next 10 years as BRICS takes off. Africa's told us to leave, South America is on the same track and things are stirring in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and both Russia and China are well underway. I know it's a long way from bike lanes, but it's all part of the same thing. We just have to ask what shape planet will we be handing over to our kids this decade and the next two or three. Good luck Skip, we're all going to need it.

They're also making some bus lanes less frequent. For bus 17, there's now 25 min waits sometimes during the day. It's bad. The more they invest in transit, the more people will use it. Same principle as why adding lanes on roads creates more traffic: the infrastructure is there, so people use it.

You have also all the land and material saved abroad. Most vehicles, even those "made in America" often source parts abroad, so we're relying on draining other countries to support our lifestyles, as well as offload some of our carbon footprint to other countries.

.. But bike wastes 1 hour more of time than car a day, out of 16 awake hours.. This is 7% less time for family and work, so only for those who hate their children and want to risk divorce and not be promoted. Non car life increases risk of sucky life, it's why the rich tell poor to bike why they drive and fly. It's pretty evil to tell person to waste 7% of life.... Please skip the denials that cars are faster than bikes, walking, and transit... Cars are great for good life, they do suck for encironment...

​@@mostlyguesses8385 That's not my experience on the door-to-door round trip. I am working in Amsterdam and living some 35 Km away. Just looking at time and cost of commuting: - Car. 90 to 120 minutes (depending on traffic). Add two hours of work to pay for ~10 EUR fuel , ~50 EUR parking (for eight hours), car costs per trip, forgetting about insurance and car maintenance. And forget about joining the weekly office drinks. - Bike. 150 to 200 minutes (mostly depending on wind). Add some 100 EUR bike maintenance per year. Should still avoid the weekly office drinks - Public transportation. 120 to 180 minutes (depending on transportation coincidences), about 25 EUR round trip. The organization is quite good, and companies are required to pay transport costs when further than 10 Km). Great when joining the weekly office drinks, even if you may have to wait 45 minutes for the bus (in the evening). As a plus, I can read in the train and bus, some 80 minutes gained for myself - Weapon of choice (for me): bike to and from the stations. 100 to 120 minutes round trip, with no dependence on public transportation on the short trips. I still have time to read on the train, can join office drinks, have a bike for the short trip...

Like I said late in the video, I don’t often hear people who cite climate change as a motivator for cycling, but it’s often a second or third factor so I think it should be in the conversation

@@Shifter_Cycling Not second or third, but near the bottom. Even citing it as a reason risks putting a lot of people on the defensive against cycling.

@@rangersmith4652 I'd have to disagree with that. A lot of people have start biking more because it's both enjoyable while being a sustainable alternative. Sure, every person's different, but I hardly see it as "at the bottom".

@@Ryan_hey My point is this: There are a lot of people who think the entire climate change push is a money grab for a relative handful of companies, a disingenuous virtue signal for others, and an excuse for massive overreach of their governments. For these folks, citing "man-made" climate change as a reason to ride a bike instead of driving a car is political; it comes across as very progressive and immediately brands all cyclists as Leftist environmentalist wackos. As soon as you cite climate change as a reason for doing anything, people who think this way -- and they're not wrong -- are on the defensive.

​@@Shifter_Cyclingit's my top motivator, personally. So - I'm good that degree of focus!

Apart from contributing to the urban heat island effect, then actually no - the sum total of all man-made heat directly pales by comparison to the energy imbalance caused by CO2 emissions. (Like, 500x more). To put it in perspective, the energy imbalance caused by the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is the equivalent to 5-7 Hiroshima sized bombs being detonated *every second*.

@@thepandaman It will eventually become a problem if economic growth continues though, Process waste heat is expected to boil the oceans in about 400 years at current growth rates.

Looking at 6:25 , e-bikes are 2 to 3 times worse than a regular bicycle... Still a lot better than cars of course. Anyway, doesn't really matter, I'm happy you're happy to be cycling! ;)

They're not. They excluded the incredibly harmful effects on mining rare heavy metals by slave labor in third-world nations AND the ticking time bomb that in fast approaching in that we are going to have to spend massive amounts on carbon to decommission these incredibly toxic batteries. That'll be a fun wake up call!

I agree there are far more benefits to bike commuting that we didn’t address in this video. That’s kind of what this whole channel is about 😉

Yet your commute time would be the same, and longer the greater the distance.

it is also good for your health. a simple excercice and also beneficial for mental health (like any outdoor activity)

It's also a very visible and public thing which means it's more likely to impact others towards seeing it as normal and eventually considering it themselves. The same is less true for home upgrades, so it stands to reason that things like bicycle commuting are more apt for grassroots cultural change leading to mass adoption. Perhaps home upgrades is something where we will depend more on incentives from the government to get it done, but with transportation we can achieve a lot simply by spreading bike culture.

Exactly. They also didn't factor in the resting metabolic rate while driving.

that's very true... I have definitely commited to "the gym of life" rather than actually going to a gym and waste energy... I combine it with transportation, activities with friends etc instead.

Indeed. There is a limit to the level of scrutiny of each little things. There was a great tv show called "The Good Place" and in some point they discover that no one reached heaven in years and after investigation they find out the reason. There is a point system to decide who goes to heaven and who goes to hell and in the past when someone did a good thing, like getting flowers to his mother he got points for that and today if someone brings flowers to his mother he still gets the same point but they deduct from that the fact that he drove a car, the flowers were wrapped in non recyclable plastic, were picked up by poorly paid workers and pesticides and access of water were used to grow them so he ends up with negative points so in the end, no one, no matter how hard he tries, gets the points to get to heaven.

I've always found that weird in these comparisons as well. For me personally, I don't notice any difference at all in eating habits from what I would have just eaten anyway 🤷‍♂️ It seems to be reaching to factor that in, unless you're riding an exceptionally long way all the time.

No, hard disagree. Commuting isn't really a workout unless you want to get sweaty

Glad you enjoyed it! The current city government is quickly building new bike infrastructure and the community is (slowly) getting used to it. The protected bike lanes downtown have been great and have made cycling to work a much more pleasant experience. Here's to hoping that they keep up with the pace and keep making cycling more viable.

I live in Victoria, and if anywhere in Canada is to pull off this modal shift, it will be here. Mildest year round climate in the country; expansive cycling network; robust cycling culture - come this Saturday, some 2300 cyclist will take to the streets, MUPs of Southern V.I., as competitors in the Ryder Hesjedal's Tour de Victoria. In fact, I will be cycling against this mob on the trail at some point that morning on my commute to work; wish me luck!

@@jasonarthurs3885 as an EV Victorian that city is #1 in North America for the "score card" on CITY to be biking capital of North America

Try Tucson AZ. VERY bike friendly

I totally agree. Each of our own contributions to the climate is negligible compared to the biggest polluting companies on the planet. That's almost a completely different topic that I'm not versed enough in to even know how to begin talking about and knowing how to solve. But I still think it's worth talking about. The more you talk about social issues, the more they can spread to people who weren't even aware of it. Me suddenly riding my bike, walking, or taking the bus to work instead of driving won't make even a fraction's fraction's fraction's worth of a dent to climate change. But if enough people can be convinced, and make that decision together, it can. Look at what happened during COVID when everybody stayed home. And when enough people begin to demand better infrastructure, cities will be required to listen. People always use the excuse that their city has shit bike infrastructure and awful transit solutions so they never use it. But if we all tried to use it and crippled the system, it would give them evidence that they need to improve. Look at all the European cities with thousands of kilometers of dedicated bike lanes and 20-minute-interval train and bus systems. It didn't happen overnight. Fortunately for them, their leaders aren't as car-brained as North American ones so that did help, but the informed people also demanded it. Don't just ask for change. Demand it, and do your best to BE the change you want to see.

totally, individuals should minimize their "carbon footprint" and also be aware that includes prejudice towards bad companies. You can't just go vegan but still use big oil!

People purchase hydrocarbons, the corpos provide what is in demand...

definitely need to be fighting on both fronts - personally living lives more environmentally friendly, and doing whatever we can to tear down oil companies and keep politicians accountable for enforcing climate friendly legislation. if only governments were truly of the people and not just plutocrats who are so far removed from the struggles and harms to the average person… they can afford to get away from the effects of climate change, we cannot

I agree to a certain extent but it can become a copout, nihilistic thing to act like nothing you do matters. Doing small things like trying to compost food scraps or using less paper to more life style changes like biking to work or mostly buying local food could influence people around you to do the same and would cascade over time and more people doing it. Throwing your hands up about corporations is on par with saying "well it doesn't matter what the US does because China/India/etc. are worse".

Fantastic job.

😂🤣

The personal carbon footprint is a scam created by British Petroleum to deflect the blame for climate change.

And the effect planet wide... absolutely nothing. If a million people do it... still nothing.

@@EGL24Xx don't try and reason with the delusional, they are way too far gone

Please, dawg, for the love of god why are you using terminology invented and popularised by multinational corporations in order to shift the blame on the little man?

Thank you for watching!

and that is how MOST cities work and why "advocating" is important

City living increases your carbon footprint dispite "research" stating the contary. They exclude buses, transports, etc., lights, HVAC, etc. that all run even when not used. That is also part of your footprint. But they don't include that.

Agreed: you'd go to a spin class and use exactly the same calories. I don't sit on my sofa just because I'm not commuting.

Thank you. I was thinking this too. People driving to the gym.

Spot on. I swear I eat more on the days I don’t bike commute.

Or just become obese. Also you should add te reduced emissions from needing less health care

also having "milder" winter lows reducing heating costs AND emissions and CHEAP electricity creating a "incentive" to drop GAS heating for electric heating

Anyone who has tried to drive downtown Montréal in the past decade would point out that there’s a lot of public transport there, it’s definitely not 81% cars. Downtown is always a gridlock, driving there really sucks.

@@vincentlemire8435 There was an ounce of hyperbole in my comment. The overall point is that the not-bicycle portion is going to be cars by a greater percentage in Canada.

Montreal proper have less than 50% of trips made by cars. Bike is 18%, transit is around 30%, and walking about 5%.

This is an interesting point. Climate change has, for a long time, been pretty intangible, which made it difficult to galvanize people. Maybe a focus on pollution is a better approach. Thank you for the support!

@@Shifter_Cycling You're most welcome! Your videos are great, especially for sharing with the non-athletic bicycle users out there.

That's awesome! I live in Malmö, 6th place. It feels like Malmö tries to catch up with Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Antwerp, while they are all fighting for the 3rd place right now with a score of ~60points :)

Nice, I was just looking at Malmö on the map. I was just wondering, is it possible to bike the bridge to Copenhagen or is it just for cars? @@PixelShade

I just watched the video for the title screen of your game "unsung" and it's really nice, really good music. @@PixelShade

You probably still want to keep at least backup servers local though.

the carbon of the power grid and servers take a LOT OF power Manitoba has "sold" the idea that we are a clean and cheap place for servers to operate and being very COLD for 10 months helps greatly as you can "passively" cool the servers for a LOT Longer then in "milder" climates where ACTIVE cooling is required

Perhaps a typo: “.5 miles”, as in “a half mile”. Were you really driving a half mile, a walk of less than 10 minutes? Or did you mean “5 miles”?… which is still a short bike ride but a longish walk.

@@CarFreeSegnitz Alas, not a typo. And it seems that most trips by most people are so short that an engine could not warm. Hence my concern that the comparative value of bikes is often grossly understated.

For me, climate change is pretty low on my list of reasons for riding, but it's still on the list. There are so many other benefits that are also important.

I was out shopping early one morning recently and the rain was intense. Because my gear is pretty good now I didn’t get wet and I was just buzzing because I enjoy cycling so much. Cycling is always a great experience.

This is a good point, and I’ve noticed this in my journeys as well. Using a bike makes me appreciate more the things in my own neighbourhood.

@@Shifter_Cycling swapping from the "lowest priced" to the best local likely is a big change from NOT being able to DRIVE to a far off box store to "save" a few bucks

When you have to carry it home via bicycle you tend to shop more insightfully.

Would be really interested to hear how much it'd be without the international flight.

Where I live it's all hydro electric for power, it really brings your household emissions down.

Amazing, thank you for the support! I really appreciate it.

I agree, and I've thought about this when it's come up before. In fact, I ate less yesterday because I was out cycling during lunchtime with no ill effects. Most of us consume more energy than we expend anyway, so the cycling probably just cancels that out.

The study came from the European Cyclists' Federation, hardly a lobby trying to downplay the benefits of cycling. And they saw a higher consumption of food by cyclists on average. It was still completely offset by cycling vs. driving, which is the main point they made.

@@barvdw Have you a link? I searched and all I found was about road RACING cyclists, not commuters...

@@SuperHyperExtra links get removed by the RU-vid gods, but the study is conducted by the ECF, and the brochure I think they mentioned in the video is called 'Cycle More Often 2 Cool Down The Planet', more precisely on page 10.

Not only do you need to eat more to account for the bike trip itself, you also need to account for the higher metabolic rate from having more muscles from all the cycling.

even small changes we can even change a little bit?

this happens so much with 30 year olds too I hope you guys can figure yourselves out

@jackosborne9324 maybe because very material living conditions have been getting worse and worse for each new year of '30 year olds'. But nah, they're probably just complainin' 'bout their silly tik tac app

agreed, can you put references in the comments? Thanks!

Did this factor in compounding interest on the money saved biking as well?

@@buttlesschap I didn't factor that in. But seeing that most people wind up borrowing money for a car, it would be a lot.

Yes, the carboon foot print was made by oil companies to shift responsibilities from their profits to the consumer. You're also right that people should make different choices, but people (especially with the lack of time and funds available to most working class people) will tend to pick the most convenient options and those comes from systemic realities, it's not their fault directly. Even looking at the owning class, these people choose to fly on private airplanes because it is convenient for them even though in terms of fighting climate change, private planes shouldn't be allowed to fly anymore (looking at how much pollution private planes generate to transport a dozen people). Those options people have available are a result of the systems people live in which has been shaped by companies and politicians) You're ignoring the fact that big corporations greatly and are responsible for the systems in our lives. The reason why so many cities are car-dependent are not supply and demand, it's because the auto mobile industry as climate town explains here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-oOttvpjJvAo.html Even the shift to EV's and electric cars. That's being pushed because yes roads for cars exist now but also because that's the way the auto industry will continue to exist. As this video points out, in terms of transit - the answer is buses, trains, metros and bikes - the ideal thing to do is to get rid of cars but then the whole auto industry falls. We also have to look at the lobbying and financial gifts that oil and car companies give to politicians to keep things going the way they have been for the last 60 years (and why there has not been significant action on climate change in the first place).

WELL STATED, xSuperFryx!

​@@soccer81894 It particularly grinds my gears when politicians that claim to be taking action on climate change will deliver big speeches and introduce legislation and taxes on the public, then in their private lives take jets for their vacations and have no problem flying all around the world to meet with their international colleagues in this age of online meetings and other options. Like, don't pretend you're making this a priority. It's so phony.

Corporations manufacture the demand for their products. It's called marketing, and yes Lobbying can also contribute to the market "demand".

@@rustyshackleford1465only for suckers that buy their crap.

Ground source heat pumps run on renewable sourced electricity would greatly reduce building carbon emissions. Even before that properly insulating our buildings up to Passive House standards.

@@CarFreeSegnitz absolutely, but you will hear the Tories clamouring that improving insulation standards are making homes unaffordable for the 'common man'. And frankly, they aren't entirely wrong, proper insulation will easily add another 5-15K per house, more if you go for a passive standard. A heat pump adds another few thousands. With real estate prices gone up as it is, that might not be in everyone's budget. Frankly, I don't see many easy solutions.

i bet you are the kind of guy who doesn't bother to vote and thinks somebody else is responsible for how the country is run. if you are serious about the carbon footprint just move to a place near a hydro power station. you saw the difference it makes in the comparison alberta vs other provinces

Lmao what if you have a UK passport you can go anywhere in the world

@@LucidFL yes, usually for a 90 day maximum and you're not allowed to work. Unless you do visa applications and then the job has to be offered to the entire EU before you

I thank you for your commitment. Mother earth thanks you for your commitment everything is governed by Karma - yours is good.

@@johnfowler4820 ​Thank you john! I hope people don't look at my comment like some kind of "humble brag". I am only trying to spotlight what one could do to reach very low levels... Society and our financial system doesn't appreciate it though. It's built on constant growth, and I am DEFINITELY not helping the economy 😅... This is my biggest gripe, our societies are built on exploitative systems which are extremely hard to circumvent... But at least I do what I can for the planet and hopefully I can inspire others to make similar choices. 🙃Even though they can seem like "extreme" in the eyes of some people.

Actually, that part of the city is nice. It has a pathway along the Bow River which is magnificent.

Is not exactly what you are asking, but you compensate all the emissions for a bike when you use it 340 miles. So, the emissions you save for not using the car 340 miles are similar to the emissions needed to build the bike. This is according to the sustainability report from Trek that has a number for all the components of a bike.

Compare the mass of a bike to that of a car. 1/100. Basically negligible compared to the emissions or savings for the transportation miles traveled

If you don't ride a plastic bike you can recycle it as scrap metal at end of its useful life

Inner tubes can be repaired and then eventually reused for other projects. It might take five years or longer to use one small container of oil. Cables can be recycled. Eventually (50 years with care and no accidents) a metal bike frame can be recycled.

That's bike rider before it morphed into cyclist or bike commuter. Since middle school in the 1mid 1970s.

It's like most carbon credits are generated by giving millions of plastic water filters or junky ovens, green-washing has reached an industrial-scale scam.

This fallacy that trains even high speed compete with air travel is pervasive. Trains compete with car travel. I take the train into the city. instead of driving. so I don't have to deal with parking. I Take the train across the state so I don't have to deal with paying attention. I would never consider taking the train across the country and the only reason I would drive that far is if I had a U haul.

I don’t think that means carbon footprint is a completely useless metric. It shouldn’t be used as an argument that climate change has to be solved by the individual choices of consumers, but more as a measure of how much our lives will need to change in order to address the largest impacts of climate change. Americans’ carbon footprints are much larger than Namibians’, which means that the US needs to do more to change than Namibia does. This means stronger policies, not stronger consumer will.

​@@georgekarnezis4311citynerd has a few videos on where high speed train travel competes: it's in this middle sweet spot between car and plane.

@@birdrocket agreed! It can also be a useful metric to break down how much policy changes impact pollution on an individual level. Megatonnes of CO2 eq. can be hard to grasp, but if you hear that a person, by biking, can reduce their carbon footprint from transport by 80%, that’s much more tangible for most people.

100% with you there!

Yeah this was a huge oversight

This comes up later in the video when we discuss individual versus systemic actions. There’s only so much we can do as individuals.

Collective action problem. Are you not gonna take action?

@@bradyrice6631 That makes no grammatical sense. What do you mean?

@@ernststravoblofeld what do you mean it makes no sense? You’re right, the footprint stuff does only show results if a large portion of the population acts. Dass dieses Video hochgeladen wurde, ist die Antwort gegen deine Stellung: es wurde auf RU-vid gepostet in dem Bestreben, mehr Menschen zu bekehren, ihre Carbon-Footprints weniger zu werden. Wenn keiner muss seinen Teil beitragen, erreichen wir nix. Aber der eigentliche Kampf liegt natürlich mit großen Korporationen; ist doch ein anderes Video und eine andere Diskussion.

@@bradyrice6631 My German is limited to bathrooms and train stations, so I didn't get anything after the English part where you clearly misread my comment.