Welcome to the week.
Here are the most noteworthy items we came across in the past seven days…
Hard lesson: Quinn Simmons, a rising star on a major professional cycling team, was pulled from races after a Tweet that was deemed “incendiary” and “divisive”. He posted a message to show his support for Trump that included a black hand-waving emoji.
Words matter: The steady march of more responsible reporting on traffic crashes continues with a new advocacy group that has released a set of reporting guidelines.
Giving back: As part of anti-racist actions, Rivendell Bicycle Works now offers a Black Reparations Pricing program where Black people get 45% off retail on the purchase of a bike and parts.
Sounds familiar: The issue of bike theft victims finding their bikes in campsites where unhoused people live has made the news in Denver as well.
EV reality: Researchers determined that we’d need about 90% of the U.S. auto fleet to run on batteries by 2050 to meet climate change goals — and we’re only at about 0.3% today.
Advertisement
Bikes and happiness: Another study found that people who are able to bike or walk to work report much greater satisfaction with their trip than other modes.
Please don’t drive: London’s cycling body is strongly encouraging people to bike more as they brace for a pandemic-fueled switch to more driving and all its associated negative impacts.
E-bikes welcome: The U.S. Department of Interior released its electric bike usage policy for public lands that’s likely to result in more land managers giving them the green light on non-motorized trails.
EU bike boom: Europe’s huge investment in cycling infrastructure to coincide with a spike in ridership during the pandemic has been given the full BBC treatment in this excellent summary report.
Simple pleasures: A NY Times travel writer who has ventured around the globe has realized cycling near his home offers many unexpected rewards.
Carfree zones: In an interview with The Oregonian released over the weekend mayoral candidate Sarah Iannarone said one way to respond to threats of factional political violence would be to create a carfree zone downtown.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
— Get our headlines delivered to your inbox.
— Support this independent community media outlet with a one-time contribution or monthly subscription.
If you have questions or feedback about this site or my work, feel free to contact me at @jonathan_maus on Twitter, via email at maus.jonathan@gmail.com, or phone/text at 503-706-8804. Also, if you read and appreciate this site, please become a supporter.
Jonathan, Quinn Simmons was not fired, as far as I can see. He was “pulled from races” for now. He is still under contract with Trek-Segafredo.
thanks. will make an edit.
wow talk about over-reacting. I’d hardly call that tweet incendiary.
The thing about being offended is, only the person being offended really has the right to determine if the behavior was inappropriate.
This wasn’t the first time that Simmons was involved in a fracas in a racial context. So, there may have been behind the scenes events that you are not aware of. Who knows what face to face interactions Simmons had with Been? One thing is certain, persistent harassment doesn’t need to be sever if it’s chronic. To call it overreacting is an uninformed opinion.
The problem with that approach is that it lets the most easily offended person define “inappropriate”, and it makes it hard to know in advance what will get you canceled.
I’m not defending Simmons, but your definition of “inappropriate” is unworkable.
Try that tact with HR and the topic of sexual harassment. Remember, this is Simmons’ job and while the harassment doesn’t appear sexual, that just happens to be the most expedient example. Women get unwanted attention, do they have the right to determine if it’s harassment? Do you think that men should be justified in saying, “it’s hard to tell in advance if my actions will be taken offensively”?
I do happen to know something about that (through professional, not personal experience). Making a harassment complaint based on nothing will not likely get you far, so it’s more than just “in the eye of the beholder”.
Certainly, and that does happen. I was a supervisor at a fast food joint in my early adulthood. I reluctantly weighed in on an argument between two people about a bicycle. Of all things. The young woman had borrowed it from the young man and trashed it. He wanted her to compensate him for it and I said, yeah, that’s the right thing to do. She complained to the manager and tried to get me up on sexual harassment. I negotiated the situation without a demerit.
But we’re talking about a public figure who has a bit of a track record (no pun intended) for questionable comments.
Now as far as how you addressed my question, which is to say you ignored it, I have to assume you don’t have a good answer. Here it is again. Do you think that men should be justified in saying, “it’s hard to tell in advance if my actions will be taken offensively”?
I ask that question because you said,
I think if you conduct yourself with respect to other people, there is no ambiguity as to what the outcome will be.
Simmons does not address people with a sense of respect.
I agree that the best defense is to leave no doubt about your intentions, and address people with the utmost respect. But if you set the bar such that no one on twitter could possibly be offended by what you say, you’re restricting yourself to saying almost nothing. There are better standards of offensiveness than what the least reasonable person on the internet thinks.
Then again, saying nothing on twitter is probably the best policy.
PS I am not answering your hypothetical, because workplace harassment is very different than twitter outrage, but I will say if you’re asking yourself that question, you’re probably about to do something you shouldn’t.
Your answer to my question is a milk-toast cop-out. I for one am not surprised that you pale at the opportunity to say anything substantial.
You’re missing the point. This isn’t an isolated incident and taken in the context of what was said and how Simmons replied to what was said, it was clearly incendiary. His intention was to voice his opinion against anti-racism with what is considered to be “internet blackface”.
Taken from another perspective, why was the hand brown? Simmons is not brown, why didn’t he use a white flesh tone hand?
I posit that there was a singular intent to his choice.
Just in case you missed it the first time, I am not defending Simmons. I am defending the right to not have one’s speech judged by the standards of the most easily offended listener, especially in a context like Twitter where you can’t possibly know who’s listening.
If you were honest enough to answer my question, then you would be engaging my argument.
If you let someone else dictate when you are allowed to be offended, you give up some measure of self control. We can agree that there are circumstances that, when investigated, demonstrate a lack of credibility. This does not mean however that we should take the rights away from people to determine when they are offended.
Furthermore, you seem to be arguing from the perspective of discrete, one off incidences. This was not one.
The subjective measure of something being offensive is 1) for acute instances, objectively offensive 2) for chronic instances, less objectively offensive. What I’m saying is, a one off needs to be clearly offensive whereas a pattern of abuse can be less clearly offensive and still cross the line. Simmons is the later, a chronic instigator of racial confrontations.
I agree that everyone has the “right” to be offended by whatever. But the existence of an offended party says nothing about wrongdoing on behalf of the speaker. It’s starting to sound like you agree that a better measure would be “objectively offensive”, or, as I prefer, “given the context, would a reasonable person find this offensive?”
Simmons may well be what you say, and may well have deserved his punishment. I have no way of knowing, and I consider that an issue between him and his employer, especially if his tweeting was connected to his work.
I think the right punishment was administered. Simmons has been out of line in the past, establishing a history. His conduct in this instance was very questionable. We don’t know the behind the scenes events.
Thanks Rivendell but I don’t need your charity.
I got banned from the Radavist for questioning Riv’s policy and suggesting that pricing by race seems illegal under the Civil Rights Act.
Then again, maybe they *really* banned me for “appropriating” black text characters to type my message… or something.
Far Left or Far Right – both will censor you at some point.
That’s great, but do you disagree with the larger need for reparations? I’ve been on Rivendell’s mailing list for far longer than I’ve actually owned a Rivendell, and it is obvious that this little company does what it believes is right. Is “it” the founder or all the employees? It appears to be a group decision. I thought I still had something to order, but I did not. I sent them money because what else am I doing to right hundreds of years of wrongs? Nothing. This may not be the best thing I could do, but it is something I can do now.
Not only that, Rivendell’s aren’t cheap. The sport is dominated by people like me, white males. If Rivendell feels this is the appropriate approach to get more African Americans riding bikes, then I support it.
I think reparations are best made in the arena of home ownership and education, since generational wealth is where the biggest gap is. Bikes don’t create generational wealth, but they do increase health. Ultimately, I wonder what precedent it will set. Will this be pigeon holed? It’s a small company so hard to say.
This is a white company trying desperately to raise it’s woke standing with other white people. I would be very surprised this “offer” will really result in more people of color buying Rivendells. Well intentioned gesture I guess but really doesn’t move the needle much.
I’m sorry you’re put off by it, D’Andre. I understand how it could be interpreted as charity, but it is not the intent. In the program, we mention that is is available to all income levels. It is hard for a white person to address hot topics that affect Black people, so I try to be clear about it, but it’s just really hard to convey feelings through words, sometimes. Anyway, sorry. Grant
Hi Grant; Is your discount program, strictly speaking, legal? I investigated a similar question, in a different context, and found that, according to Oregon’s public accommodation law, it was not legal for a physical store (or other “place of public accommodation”) to offer discounts (or make any other “distinction”) based on a number of protected statuses, one of which is race. You are not in Oregon, and you’re not a physical store, so the circumstances are different, but do you have legal advice that the discount program is lawful, and, if so, would you be willing to share the legal reasoning?
This is an honest question, not an attempt to pick a fight.
It’s entirely possible to convert 90% of the US auto fleet to run on batteries in 3 decades so I’m not sure why this is being used as a “reality check”. Something like 2 dozen countries have committed to banning sales of combustion engine vehicles between 2030 and 2040. This gives plenty of time to achieve this.
The article also ignores the negative trend in per capita vehicle miles traveled in many advanced countries, yes, even in the US.
Finally, dealing with climate change will require a full spectrum of changes across many aspects of our lives. Public transit, telecommuting, reduction in working hours and, oh hey, BICYCLING among other changes will need to be advanced to make this happen. These will all chip away at the need to continue growing the auto fleet.
Having fewer children helps also.
Just because we can doesn’t mean we will. If you’ve ever faced the logic “this is the way we’ve always done it” when the topic of change comes up, then you know that the default will be to not convert to EVs. Time is finite and the old guard is still keeping the gates of change guarded.
It’s easy for you and I to independently commit to changing our petrol consuming cars to EVs. It’s another thing entirely for the Nation to commit to that. Just look at the regressions we’ve seen in the last four years under the Super Spreader in Chief.
Maybe, but until very recently the main argument would have been that it would not be possible to convert 90% of the fleet to EVs by 2050. I think recent advances, combined with widespread recognition that CA’s 2035 mandate is not entirely implausible, have put that to rest.
Actually the surprise for me is that if we made that 90% conversion, we actually could meet our climate goals. That is not to say that we will, but if anything I see that as an optimistic note. We actually could pull it off if we ever got sufficiently motivated to really take action.
Portland may not be a good sample but my perception is that a recent increase in telecommuting has led to a decrease in bicycling. Car use has bounced back. Biking to work, not so much.
I don’t think it’s car commuting that has bounced back, though. Office buildings are still largely empty, with still far more people telecommuting than ever. And yet car traffic is back pretty close to pre-COVID levels.
Biking was way up early on, but the anecdotal evidence available to me is starting to arrange itself into a pattern of a dramatic drop in bicycling, as cyclists have lost confidence that the roads are safe enough anymore. Just talked to a neighbor who got road-raged by motorists twice in a single day yesterday: once while on his bicycle, once while on his motorcycle.
Give it time. Once they realize they are free from the yoke of the oppressive police state and are instead governed by collective social mores and the strictures of human conscience, I’m confident drivers will stop reacting to government violence and will start driving more courteously. Community standards will be a much more effective regulator of misbehavior than government thugs ever were, and we’ll all feel safer on the streets.
2021 will be a banner year for urban bicycling, and, really, for everything.
It might be a good year to buy a lightly used $3000 bicycle for cheap. However by that logic there should be several of those 83 pound Bakfiets on sale for $500.
I genuinely don’t get how offering a discount based on a merchant’s subjective evaluation of a customer’s “race” is even remotely legal. It looks to me like Rivendell is just begging to be sued. Have they run their proposal past a lawyer?
They did – it was Jackie Chiles.
How is race subjective?
Would Tiger Woods qualify for the discount, and if so, what objective rule did you apply to arrive at that answer? If you find that difficult to answer, that’s how race is subjective.
This isn’t difficult to answer in the slightest. He is African American, therefore he qualifies.
I’m afraid to ask how you arrived at that conclusion, but not everyone (including Woods himself) would label him “African American”. That’s why it subjective.
Tiger Woods self identifies as Cablinasian. A word that he made up to express his multi-ethnic background. Which includes African American. But it’s a word that doesn’t have any true meaning, since he is the sole arbiter of it’s definition.
There is no ambiguity to his ethnic background, it’s not as cut and dried as you want it to be, but it is not subjective. There is nothing subjective about saying “Tiger Woods is African American, Thai, a little Dutch, Chinese and Native American. This is verifiable and transcends “lived experience”, founded on biological and sociological facts.
No one has an ethnic background that is singular. I have a friend who identifies as Jewish and he foolishly did 23andMe. He found that his father was only half Jewish. My friend was devastated. My point is, if you think you know your ethnicity, you’re probably wrong. Additionally, your ethnicity is not singular.
Is a person required to identify with only one facet of their ethnicity? Not in my opinion. Can they identify with different ethnic backgrounds to suit the situation? Absolutely.
I understand you to be arguing that a person’s race is an immutable, objective fact. I agree you can make objective statements like “my grandmother was born in Lithuania, and my grandfather was born in Egypt”, but birthplace (or language or culture) doesn’t well define “race” unless you are willing (as I am not) to accept highly problematic and arbitrary rules about who qualifies as what and how far back you have to go and so on.
I believe race to be more a matter of cultural identity, which, as you note, is malleable and can change to suit the situation. I’m not sure how that can be objective. It is clear that a person’s “race” is less important to me than it is to a lot of other people.
Maybe we just think about race differently.
I think for most of America it’s still the one-drop rule.
Tiger’s dad identified as “half black” so I don’t think we need to go down the racist rabbit hole of the one-drop rule.
When it comes to reparations, is it fair to only bestow a benefit to full blooded African Americans? There’s another racist notion that says, “race follows the mother”. Which allowed plantation owners to rape their slave women without worrying about losing their property to illegitimate heirs. If we suddenly said, the one-drop rule should be ignored for purpose of bestowing reparations, then all of these children of rape and their progeny would be ineligible.
Of course, white women were themselves property. I’m not as familiar with the outcome of white women who willfully slept with black slaves.
Anyway, yes, there are a lot of racist notions to our currently held standards for ethnicity. But as I say, when it comes to reparations, the criteria for granting them should be as broad as the criteria that justified subjugation in the first instance.
Side note: I have a lot of grievances with our collective understanding of ethnicity, but I recognize that my opinions get pigeonholed by the “smart” people who decide how ethnicity is described.
Lawyer is, lemme just say, “not thrilled.” But I think any body who reads our actual document, the program explained by us, will find that it doesn’t “punish” non-Black people…in the same way that if you and a friend are walking around a field somewhere, and your friend finds a quarter and you don’t—you aren’t poorer for it. If you love your friend, you’re richer, even tho he’s the dude with the extra quarter. We all get lifted when any of us gets lifted. That’s the idea, right?
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was intended to end almost a century of legalized discrimination. Legalized. It was written on behalf of Black people, so they couldn’t be discriminated against anymore. Of course, they still are, and our admittedly meager (yet sincere) gesture with BRP acknowledges that there is still work to be done.
Of course there will be disagreements, but the intent is good. Whether or not anybody agrees with the intent, I assure you we mean well, and we mean no harm to those who “don’t qualify,” nor insult to those who do. This will be my final comment on here, but I urge anybody to read the program on our site. Go to the home page, scroll down to a list of links, and click on the one that says Black Reparations Pricing. Peace to all, even if you hate us for this. That is not me trying to be like Jesus, BTW.
In Oregon, at least, it doesn’t matter whether you are “punishing” or “rewarding”. It’s the making a distinction between people of different races (or religions, or sexual orientations, or whatever) that is the problem (a perspective I totally agree with on both a philosophical and practical level). But I don’t hate you for disagreeing 🙂
On a practical level, if no one sues you, the legality may not matter. Best of luck!
I, for one, applaud you for what you’re doing. I agree that while laws may be written to prevent any discrimination based on race, the intent was to prevent the ongoing subjugation of BIPOC and elevation of whites above others. Systematic racism is still real.
(Full disclosure: I’ve read both Just Ride and Eat Bacon, Don’t Jog, and agree with about 80% of both of them – while vehemently disagreeing with about 20%).
Re EV REALITY
The reality is that if every car in the US went electric, power consumption would jump by about half. The US is only about 15 percent wind and solar now, so much of that power surge would likely be met by fossil fuel plants pumping yet more carbon into the atmosphere. Charging demand could peak at night and in the winter when solar and or wind power is less available. Massive hydro and nuclear expansion would be environmentally undesirable.
The solution is cheap and low tech. Much more biking and walking and riding highly efficient electric transit. This will save billions wasted on new freeways for carbon fired Teslas.
You are assuming our power generation mix is constant. Coal, the least efficient, is on its way out, oil is on its way out, and gas is also getting sidelined.
Converting to EVs will take time, and our grid is changing. They are hardly a panacea, but for those who can’t, won’t, or don’t walk and bike, EVs are almost certainly better than continuing to rely on gasoline.
And please, TriMet, electrify your fleet already!
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/10/03/rocky-mountain-institute-study-shows-renewables-are-kicking-natural-gas-to-the-curb/
PS Capitalists aren’t stupid: “Even if a gas project appears competitive today, thermal generating plants are expected to have a service life of 40 to 50 years. So the economics not only have to look good now, they have to look good for 2060 and beyond. If they can’t remain competitive over that period of time, they risk becoming stranded assets and investors will not realize the return on investment they expected. Investors hate that!”
Natural gas has skyrocketed from nothing to being our single largest source of power generation (35% — all time high in 2019) and every credible energy organization predicts further increases in the next decade or two.
What’s even more absurd is that we produce far less renewable energy today than we did in the 1950s — not a joke.
A graphical visualization:
https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/482245/?utm_source=showcase&utm_campaign=visualisation/482245
EIA.gov data for same date range:
And, I presume, by less you mean more. Our consumption of power has grown about four times over that time period, so even a decreasing percentage results in a significant increase in production.
I’m basing this comment on information found in the second link that you posted.
Soren, That’s showing the percentage of the total amount produced. Renewables aren’t keeping pace with the increased demand but more is being produced than in the ’50s.
yeah … less as a percentage. that’s all that matters when it comes to the climate crisis, after all.
No, the percentage doesn’t matter at all. What matters is absolute amount of CO2 emitted.
The real message here is that we’re emitting way more than we were in the 1950s, and while our ability go generate “green” power is increasing rapidly, it hasn’t nearly caught up with growth over the past 70 years. While the trend towards renewables is accelerating, it needs to go faster yet, and we need to find ways to reduce consumption of fossil fuels.
While the trend towards renewables is positive, it isn’t positive enough.
First of all, everyone of my links above dealt with percentage so my meaning was OBVIOUS to anyone who did not have a semantic axe to grind. Secondly, please stop claiming that I’m unaware of the fact that energy use has increased over time without any evidence of this.
The whole point of that comment was to point out that trend towards renewables has been deaccelerating for ~50 years and even after modest accelleration the past few decades has not come close to its peak. If that is not an indictment of ‘murrican rigged market extractive capitalism, I don’t know what is.
The growth in renewables accelerating, as your own data shows. It currently outpacing overall energy growth, which means the trend is positive. Not positive enough, but still positive.
The ironic thing is that biking on the typical Portland diet likely emits more CO2 equivalents per kilometer than driving a Tesla for its average lifetime. And neither are particularly sustainable on the global basis required if we are going to BEGIN to address ecocide in the next 10-20 years.
The USAnian dictum to less wealthy nations has always been that other people are supposed to do the things we are unwilling to do because we are exceptional(ly narcissistic).
I keep hearing versions of this thing and remain incredulous. I’d happily read your source material. Very skeptically, but happily.
I personally don’t think you should be happy about either alternative as I very clearly stated that I think both suck.
Nevertheless, there are many, many examples of these types of analyses. Here is one from a very well-known climate scientist at Harvard:
http://www.keith.seas.harvard.edu/blog/climate-impacts-of-biking-vs-driving
The average passenger load of a motor vehicle is ~1.7 and, even in Portland, a Tesla model 3 has around 1.7x the km/liter of the gen 2 prius used in that analysis.
https://evtool.ucsusa.org/
Thus, it is my contention that on a passenger gCO2e / km comparison, the average bike rider likely comes in second to the average tesla trip.
PS: I switched to a vegan diet in the late 80s when I first became deeply concerned about impending ecocide (now I’m just resigned and deeply angry at our collective failure to take meaningful action). Howeover, I don’t expect everyone to become vegan, just mostly vegan.
There is a false assumption to the Harvard blog post, a few actually. One, it’s a “back of the envelope” estimate. Two, it assumes that the diet is Paleo and has embedded CO2 emissions from meat production, but PDX has a larger than average vegan / vegetarian population. Three, it’s not peer reviewed, therefor it is not science, as the scientific process incorporates peer review.
You need a better source.
Here is a piece from notorious auto-centric bike haters, Momentum magazine, that better explains the Keith group piece. Please take a look at it before you dismiss the analyses of a climate scientist who contributed to IPCC reports.
https://momentummag.com/carnivorous-cyclists-contribute-global-warming-vegan-drivers-argues-harvard-researcher/
So, this is a circular reference to the first Harvard link. Which means, you’re using a new fact to support and old fact that relies on the old fact to be true.
Come on man.
“You need a better source.”
Ummm…my original comment contained the word “likely”. This is an important word that reasonable people use when there is imperfect information. When someone disputes a “likely” statement backed up by expert analysis, the onus should be on that person to detail what was wrong with the expert analysis and/or provide a better source. You haven’t done this at all.
For the record, one of the reasons that cycling or light-weight neighborhood EV use does have potential for mitigation of emissions is that it would require shifting to a system that greatly reduces total miles traveled. I see light-weight EVs that are only used for short trips as not being too much different from cycling. Tesla 3s are not this and a transition to an Elon Musk-centric transportation system is something that I find horrifying.
As to why cycling like a USAnian is no solution to climate change one only has to imagine what would happen if the entire world started eating the meat-centric diet of the typical Portlander.
And that brings me back to my initial point about rich narcissistic nations like the USA. Some of the major reasons we emit so much CO2e is due to our transportation and consumption patterns. If we want to address GHG emissions in any kind of serious way, we need to move around and eat more like the people our military tortures, bombs, drones, and mass-murders.
I previously rejected your source on the following merits:
This sealioning is tiresome. I was not submitting my “likely” comment for peer review.
However, your comment about peer review being the scientific process made me laugh out loud for real. So thanks for that in this time of little laughter.
Maybe hairsplitting? Sealioning? Sorry, I’m not a net expert. But, Jason said the scientific method incorporates peer review, not that they are the same. I think he’s right in that scientific publications today go through peer review. Any exceptions are in the popular press and not what we call journals.
Peer review is part of the process of publishing manuscripts in journals (or obtaining grants), not part of the process of science.
I won’t be reading or posting on this thread again.
I’m not harassing you.
You made a statement based on faulty evidence I said so. You then submitted a new source which was based on the same faulty information. So, I said so.
I have never demanded for you to provide a source. Rather the contrary, I read your source and pointed out it’s crap.
That is not “sealioning”. Inform yourself.
All I have done is called out that you are spreading false information. Under the pretext of “well it could be possible”. It also “could be possible” that Smurfs do indeed exist. Not likely, based on scientific evidence.
I never said, “peer review is the scientific process. I said it is a fundamental part of the scientific process. Take special note of step 5, evidence.
The evidence one uses to form their opinions is very important to accurate outcomes.
K. Took a first look at that. Note, I said happily -read-, which says nothing about being happy with the conclusions.
People in cars will make trips that people riding bikes can only fantasize about. A weekend trip to Seattle? On a bike that’s higher level randonneuring with no time for a baseball game. So the marginal analysis is bogus. Cheap gas makes extra travel pretty painless.
Ignoring inputs to manufacturing: also bogus. New bikes are ripped from the planet, more or less, but on a scale that makes the most outré bicycles look benign, as compared to that Prius.
I don’t give a damn how many miles a person counts to amortize their share of a rare earth mine. Where was the picture of that?
Parking: Do we need to talk about how many parking spaces per car?
Paleo diet my @$$.
Looking forward to more of this next time it comes up.
Nah, you are missing my argument entirely. Take a look at the expected emissions of a Tesla 3 vs a gen 2 Prius using the handy tool from the ucsusa. The paleo bit was silly but take a look at the table in the momentum piece.
Why dabble with an argument that looks very much like the kind of reasoning a person would use to talk themself into buying a thing that they want but don’t need?
Another point that perhaps you can appreciate: a new car of any sort implies about an extra year of work time, trading life for money, to pay it off. In that space of time a person could ride a bicycle into the big part of Central Oregon about 50 times. That’s for the people who say you need a car to recreate.
Bikes, skates, boards, scooters, e-scooters, e-bikes, e-boards, and other light-weight EVs have enormous advantages over teslas due to their impact on health, use of built space, particulate pollution etc. My initial comment focused exclusively on gCO2e/p-km, not these other metrics.
A transition towards increased use of pedal-powered bikes would be one of my preferred alternatives. I just don’t think it’s going to happen in the USA in the next few decades and, therefore, I believe the anti-electrification rhetoric of some “car-lite” bike-riding climate warriors to be very unhelpful.
I think we agree at least 97%. I admit that I reacted to your first sentence waaay up above without parsing your second sentence at all.
Omitting, for now, a screed about electric CAR adoption (which you clearly do not support) here’s another reference for the hypothetical fourth person still reading:
https://phys.org/news/2020-08-electric-cars-wont-dont-upeconomist.html
According to the authors of the report, the production of lithium-ion batteries for light electric vehicles emits an average of 150 – 200 kilos of carbon dioxide equivalents per kilowatt hour of battery produced.
In one day, the average person breathes out around 500 litres of the greenhouse gas CO2 – which amounts to around 1kg in mass.
Over the lifetime of an EV the embedded energy of battery manufacture represents a small percentage of total lifetime CO2e. There really isn’t any debate about this in the literature so please inform yourself.
What cracks me up is that you seem to be assuming that I’m pro EVs as an alternative to the changes outlined in the IPCC AR5. I’m not pro-EV at all and as I clearly stated above, I don’t see mass adoption of EVs in the USA as any kind of solution to the ongoing climate crisis.
Electrifying transportation is likely a necessary, but not sufficient step. So not a solution, but something that has to happen.
“Prof Greg Marsden, from the Institute for Transport Studies at Leeds University, warned: “Electrification is necessary but not enough.
“Travel demand reductions of at least 20% are required, along with a major shift away from the car if we are to meet our climate goals.
“This implies a really major social change. That is why it is a climate emergency and not a climate inconvenience.”
Great! I don’t know why Prof. Marsden is, but I’m glad he agrees with me.
Was agreeing with you and thought you’d like the turn of phrase.
You imagine I think you’re pro EV.
You are misinformed.
What confuses me is, why present this stuff about the marginal efficiency of new car operation when it seems like what you really care about is living as lightly as possible? The half of the picture dealing with a low-impact human diet is interesting to me. The car half seems like it would matter to people who Really Like cars, can’t imagine living without one, and are perhaps frightened by stuff outside the window.
“The car half seems like it would matter to people who Really Like cars…”
https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621052/mb-confronting-carbon-inequality-210920-en.pdf
Take a look at that report and consider that someone who does not dismiss it out of hand might not see much difference between the average USAnian who rides a bike and the average one who drives a Tesla.
“…can’t imagine living without one, and are perhaps frightened by stuff outside the window.”
I’m trying to decide if I’m being teased. Just in case I’m not, this is me pouring fake blood on people’s shirts at a die-in for traffic safety at ODOT Region 1 headquarters.
https://www.oregonlive.com/multimedia/2015/05/cyclists_hold_die-in_near_odot.html
“why present this stuff about the marginal efficiency of new car operation”
I know an awful lot about EVs because 6-7 years ago I still had some hope that they might be useful as a major transportation emissions mitigation pathway in the USA. Now, I look at them as something that will gradually happen regardless and won’t do much to prevent us from playing civilizational russian roulette with 2 C.
Somehow the link is janky, try this for the EV study.
What just occurred to me is, the lifestyle choices that cause the cyclist to have a CO2 footprint are a wash. Because the driver of the EV will have made the same or similar choices.
Bad science.
Bingo. A person does not order a 28 oz steak because they just rode 161 km, they do that because they want to revel in the excess of eating a whole lot of meat. You might see a bicycle in the parking lot of a steakhouse but you might also see a wolverine on your porch.
EV reality: About 5% of all cars in CA are EVs. If that becomes 90% and if they can buy the juice somewhere, will the wires not smoke? But perhaps they have a plan for that. For sure they’re catching up on the deferred maintenance. You don’t want to be sitting on a dead battery when you suddenly need to get the hell out of town.
Can’t pump gas when the power goes out either.
THE grant petersen, 3 ‘e’s, comments on BP and gets a total of 8 up votes? That’s a tough room. Jaded perhaps.
What’s the better idea for recompensing a bunch of people who were, Under Law, subhuman chattle for 240 years and then blamed for it for 160 more.
Maybe a scholarship to Brown University?