This week’s Comment of the Week comes from reader “X” in response to our story about River City Bicycles going 100% electric. The story’s 68 comments sorted into the usual e-bike debates — do they replace car trips; what we should call conventional bikes to distinguish them from e-bikes; concerns about the environmental impact of batteries; riding etiquette.
X’s comment stood out because of its clarity and simplicity. Also, I liked it because X moved from an abstract discussion to something personal by mentioning a recent decision to electrify one of their several bikes.
I tried to fact-check X’s 2% figure, but couldn’t easily find a citation. However, I came across a review published by the Institut Polytechnique de Paris about the carbon footprint of electric bikes, and it did a good job of attaching some facts to our e-bike discussions (including the carbon footprint of a frame).
Here’s what X had to say:
Here’s a number that has to be in the e-whatever debate: 2 percent. As in, an e-bike is a very small proportion of a car at all points of the cycle. For another person who is morally opposed to extracting materials from the ground I understand that and could admire them for making their own shoes. I’ll join them for a walk any time.
If we scrapped five percent of the cars now existing that would provide enough materials to build every living person a new bike.
In global terms, I’m rich. I have several bikes and am still second-guessing my decision to convert one to an e-bike. Possibly I could have better used the resources to make the bike lighter and more efficient since my ability to wheel it in or out, and park it, may be limiting before my ability to pedal it around would have been.
Thank you “X.” You can read X’s comment in the context of the BP comment section’s ongoing discussion of all things e-bike, below the original post.
Thanks for reading.
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I doubt anyone would argue riding or owning an ebike isn’t better than driving or owning a car. But that assumes that e-bikes are only being used for transportation to replace trips that otherwise would have been taken by car. In fact, a lot of ebikes are being used for recreation. And as toys, one of their attractions is easy speed.You can sail down the Springwater corridor with no effort. If you have to stop to avoid hitting someone you can be back up to speed effortlessly. In that case, the appropriate comparison is four-wheelers. E-bikes are motor bikes. They belong on roads with other motor vehicles, not on multi-use paths and sidewalks with pedestrians and cyclists.
How do you know why people are riding? The springwater for example is a fantastic transportation route. 90% of the time I’m riding my ebike on it, it’s a trip that would otherwise be by car.
Yes Springwater is a fantastic transportation route. But it may no longer be a very good recreation path to take your toddler for a walk when it is full of people all effortlessly riding e-bikes at 25 mph, some while talking on their phone. They aren’t likely looking out for a kid on training wheels straying into their path. Of course they aren’t likely to have that problem since people with kids will just stop using the path.
“90% of the time I’m riding my ebike on it, it’s a trip that would otherwise be by car.”
or perhaps by bike?
I don’t think cars are supposed to be on the Springwater at all?
Eh? If by car, it would clearly be on a parallel route.
I was kidding about that part.
But I also feel that in these conversations the claim is often that the ebike replaces a car trip, when I think it equally and perhaps more likely that the ebike replaces the bike trip. Of course we still, all these years in, don’t seem to have actual data on these questions, which is beyond ridiculous.
And if we have data, please won’t someone point it out to us so we can start having more constructive conversations about this matter?
Why does it matter “why people bike” or “why people e-bike?” It’s really immaterial why. People do it for what ever reason they want and they don’t need to share it.
What next? If your reasons for e-biking are acceptable by 9watts then you are allowed on the streets. If not, then you can’t?
“It’s really immaterial”
says you.
I think all of it matters. But only because folks here and elsewhere love to tally the supposed environmental benefits of this or that choice. If we find folks jumping all over the map in their transport substitutions then it may matter.
It has nothing to do with me and as usual everything to do with whether the virtue being signaled here is real or made up. If we are ever going to gain on these problems we here generally agree on then we have to do proper accounting, not just wave our hands and cheer.
“…in these conversations the claim is often that the ebike replaces a car trip, when I think it equally and perhaps more likely that the ebike replaces the bike trip.”
THIS.
Y bad tho?
Considering that most people who ride for transportation quit riding for transportation (e,g, ~50% decline in PDX bike mode share), this is almost certainly a good thing. We need to figure out how to retain concerned, fearful, tired, and differently-abled people who formerly road bikes and e-bikes are one good tool to accomplish this, ATMO.
PS: The negativity from “experienced” cyclists towards e-cycling only serves to illustrate how “experienced” cyclists are frequently antagonistic to things that might increase mode share but oh-so-slightly and directly or indirectly inconvenience their enjoyment of bike riding.
“negativity from “experienced” cyclists towards e-cycling”
what you read as negativity may not be what you think. e-bikes and bikes aren’t the same thing.
I happen not to think we have enough power plants or lithium mines or aluminum mines or spare climate stability to equip everyone (including all those who already have bikes) with an ebike, and still meet our targets. Same for cars or SUVs, but no one (well fewer folks) is (are) championing them as climate solutions so I tend not to mention them every time.
I am well aware that many here see e-bikes as god’s gift to the climate but I happen not to share that view. I think bikes are god’s gift to the climate, especially since we already have several hundred million of them and they last longer and don’t need wall sockets, lithium mines, and all the fiddly spare parts that regular bikes don’t have and that wear out (I suspect) much quicker, are more fragile, more tightly coupled with our transnational capitalist economic system than the brake pads and chains I buy to keep my almost forty-year-old bike going.
You can see what the issue is when you see comments here complaining of “effortlessly going 25mph”. The real problem people have is these dang kids not putting in the work! I pedal really hard and you should too! I went to school up hill both ways!
That and “cheap Chinese bikes”, etc.
Take away the complaints of other people not putting in the effort and sinophobia, and there isn’t really much left. They’re no different than any other cyclist who can be considerate or not, safe or not, etc.
What if an ebike is used for recreation and replacing recreational driving? I don’t have a problem with ebikes on MUPs, but I do think there should be limits on how fast they are ridden in those spaces.
Electric motorcycles belong on roads. Class 1 e-bikes, and probably 2 and 3, definitely belong on shared, multi-use paths and anywhere else a muscle powered bike goes. With class 1 for sure, there is more variance in the weight of the riders than the weight difference between an e-bike and a muscle bike.
Apologies, but I’m really struggling with this take:
I live by a greenway and watch hundreds of bikes go by every day. I can’t even tell if they’re ebikes or not half the time. What I do know is that either way I vastly prefer that bike traffic to car traffic because they don’t make obnoxious noise, don’t leave a trail of disgusting fumes as they go, and are extremely unlikely to kill someone or cause serious destruction in the event of a crash. And as a bonus they often have adorable little kids in the back waving as they go by. Just infinitely more pleasant in every way I can think of.
Bike traffic is the best kind of traffic and is great to watch. I used to live on a “busy” bike street where the kitchen window looked out onto the scene. My girlfriend once asked me if I was checking out someone who rode by on a bike, I promptly named the maker of the frame as it was a sweet vintage ride, and also with a beautiful woman riding it. 😉
It truly amazes me that people are often opposed to their streets getting designated as greenways. It’s such a positive thing, and often really just a small, incremental change as PBOT rarely throws down the diverters and hard, concrete changes that they should. I often wonder, would those people rather their street gets widened and more car traffic get added?
This touches on the inherent unsustainability of the “I got mine, &^%$ y’all” mindset that the automobile embodies perhaps the most: As an individual, it is and probably will always be the best mode in terms of speed, reliability, comfort, etc. And at the same time as a society, it is and probably always will be the worst mode in terms of infrastructure cost, pollution (sound, exhaust, particulates, you name it), geometry, etc. And you can see this in the value of land: Freeway in, prices down. Bike lanes in, prices up.
And yet I suspect many will buy into the latter while at the same time lobbying against any impediment to the former (for them personally, at least, it would of course be great if all other cars weren’t on the road – I bet neighborhood diverters would get universal support from individuals who were individually exempt from having to pay it any heed, and yet there’s an obvious scaling problem with that deal).
I think it also boils down to the more general absolute refusal to in any way acknowledge that individuals should make any consideration of society in their personal choices. Like, it is totally a third rail to say “you shouldn’t do X” because X is a personal choice! My Freedom!
I want to see (and I think, too slowly, we are seeing) a real culture shift, where people are actually shamed for choosing to live certain ways. I don’t think something like driving a big truck is an inherently moral decision. In a vacuum. But in the context of the world, with other people, with global warming, it IS a moral decision and it’s a bad one if you don’t have some particular reason to need it. The same can be said (to varying degrees!) about driving when you don’t need to. About living 40 miles from your work. About all of it. We need to stop pretending like we’re all in isolation only making personal choices. It reminds me of the delusion / dishonesty of the “off grid” or “self reliance” youtubers who put on this image that they are supporting themselves farming in Alaska or whatever. You’re not. You are not isolated. You’re using a chainsaw made with parts from around the world fueled with gas from across an ocean, wearing boots made of leather you can’t get from the forest. Etc.
The root of many problems are capitalism which insists we should have these choices to make freely. The way it manifests is people being encouraged to make as much money as they can and buy as much stuff as they can afford, and any questioning of that should be taken as a personal affront.
Comment of the week! (In response to a CotW no less!)
I have an acquaintance that just bought a large pickup with a pricey custom camper on the back so that they can take their young kids camping. I’m not sure how to avoid being judgmental when there are very real consequences to their choices; for sure it cooled my friendly feelings towards them. A giant truck so that you can enjoy the outdoors with your kids maybe 10 days per year, meanwhile spoiling the outdoors with emissions the rest of the year and contributing to the decline of their future enjoyment of the world. Also, have you heard of a tent???
Are you equally judgemental about all travel? A single plane trip will create more emissions than that truck will create in a year. Much less four plane trips including spouse and two kids. The hotel stay will likely create far more emissions than their camper. And those Amazon trucks that deliver stuff aren’t exactly environmentally friendly, nor likely is the stuff they deliver. Including a tent. People always seem to be judgemental of other people’s choices but not their own.
That’s not true if you look at the emissions your behavior is actually responsible for (i.e. the marginal emissions of you choosing that mode).
With a plane, it’s not terribly high (because that the plane will still fly without you on board, probably with another passenger in your seat). With a truck, it’s a year’s worth of truck emissions, because if you choose not to drive it stays in your garage.
As for Amazon, is one truck making deliveries worse than dozens of people making individual trips? I guess that depends on whether they’d walk/bike or drive.
Induced demand is one of the worst justifications ever for air travel, or for any other personal choice that is environmentally unsustainable. I believe we can no longer afford that kind of thinking in a time of accelerated global warming.
No. You don’t get to escape it because someone will take your spot on that flight. Taking a flight increases the amount of flights by one passenger seat, period. That person that takes your spot would have otherwise taken a spot on another flight and in the end, it all adds up to a net increase in flights.
True facts about the Amazon deliveries. Whatever you buy, Amazon or not, it had to get shipped somewhere close by in a big vehicle of some kind. The Amazon truck is at least making many stops.
Side tangent, but Amazon is an interesting case. In a future ideal world, something like Amazon (but in my opinion, not some private mega corporation) would still have a place. I think the rampant bauble buying it causes is problematic, but as a way to organize all end-user distribution in one place, it’s a useful tool. As it works now, it’s not optimized for being environmentally (or socially) responsible, of course, so I don’t like it as-is.
When they fire up a new plane because of my one seat, I’ll concede the point. Until then, I’ll continue to observe that airlines use variable pricing to keep their flights full. It is likely true that airlines (at least theoretically) profit slightly more when I fly (because they don’t need to lower the price a little to entice a new passenger, who might fly at $169 but not at $189), but they are not adding planes to satisfy marginal demand. Demand is very price sensitive (elastic), and airlines use this to keep planes full and maximize their profits.
The government store?
When you give $189.00 to an airline you give them so many reasons to carry on business as they have in the past. Sure they count seats, but if the bottom line is healthy they will absolutely get more planes, or push them harder.
Anyone who might be pedaling around town as matter of conscience pretty much washes all that out with a couple round trip flights a year.
I don’t think a person who enjoys biking or finds it time efficient should quit because planes. I do believe that if all the bikey suspects in Portland and Seattle (Eugene, Bellingham, etc) looked for reasons to take the train, we’d have better train service. I’ve been let down by Amtrak in various ways so we don’t need to talk about that, but I’m still planning a 2000 mile trip next month.
Yes, I am this ‘judgmental’ about all travel. I do raise my eyebrow about people taking frequent or any plane trips, and have significantly reduced my own flights. None of us ‘need’ vacations in any form, whether by plane or truck, hotel or tent: we want them and I am conflicted about how we balance our wants with the wants of the rest of the world, present and future, to be able to meet their basic needs and not have the planet burn up.
But ‘judgmental’ is a loaded term in your construction. I mean judgmental in the same way 9watts speaks of it: “Judgment is essential, is how we make meaning in the world, forms the basis of our laws and policies, however imperfect and flawed they are.”
I don’t think that’s true, actually. It is for sure one big lump of CO2 emissions at a time, and yeah I think people that fly a lot deserve some scrutiny. But as far as I understand it, a flight across the country emits less CO2 (and this is key) per person than driving would. So assuming that big truck drives more than ~6000 miles a year (a safe assumption), the truck is worse.
I don’t have the time to find the stats right now, this was something I learned from a science podcast, not peer review (although that’s where they get a lot of their info), so it could be wrong. That doesn’t take away from the fact that it is still thousands of miles of travel in a short time, and if it’s more efficient than driving it’s only marginally so, so it’s still pretty bad.
And significantly less than the train does, using the average-per-person method of accounting (which, while valuable at the systems level, I think is useless for evaluating your own behavior, where marginal cost is everything).
Restricting “freedom” is not third rail at all. We do it all the time.
There are a lot of values of X that are strongly restricted (so much that we’ll imprison you if you do them), and many more that are socially frowned upon. What you seem to want is to move more things into the X column.
That’s fine. When enough people agree that there’s something that belongs in the X bucket, it will happen. Smoking in bars is a recent addition, joining driving a car made after 1975 without a catalytic converter or using DDT to control a bug problem. Flavored vapes seem to be moving into the X bucket.
The difficulty is convincing enough people that they should agree with your preferred X item. Do that, and the rest is comparatively easy.
Or did you want to impose a new X on society without general agreement?
This is all well understood. I want people who already believe we should be less wasteful to be more… something, I don’t know. Maybe judgmental (the way we would be judgmental about seeing someone toss a bag of garbage out the window of a car) to people who we know who do wasteful things. And when we have levers of power, yes, imposing rules. I know culture shifts happen. I know you think there is no way to make them happen but I’m not satisfied kicking my feet up and being satisfied that AI and batteries are going to make the problems moot. Introduce those and without some cultural changes, people will just find ever more excessive ways to waste resources.
Without planning, our economy will consume everything. It’s doing it now. Ultimately that is the problem and toppling that seems too monumental a task to contemplate, so in the mean time I’m just going to hope I can get more people to think like I do.
Planned economies were pretty effective at destroying the environment as well, at least until they collapsed.
I think you have acknowledged you own a single family home?
That is a selfish personal choice according to many.
Gatekeeping can be a bitch…
“That is a selfish personal choice according to many”
care to elaborate? I’m not following at all.
I don’t see the parallel you are drawing btw oversized trucks for vacationing and home ownership….
It’s selfish to own a large truck.. selfish to have a vacation vehicle. Selfish to have children.
‘These are all common refrains and John V gave the list of things he does not approve of.
Compact dense multi unit housing is the model for climate activists, Soren here will give you all details you need.
My opinion that single family homes are not sustainable is considered toxic but John opinions are just concerns….
“My opinion that single family homes are not sustainable”
You said selfish before. Thanks for elaborating.
I think the having children part is more of a problem, more selfish, less sustainable than whether a given house has four or fewer exterior walls. I was simply not familiar with this (apparently self evident to you) notion that single family houses were selfish.
Your distinction still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
John v used term “bad moral decision” to own a large truck.
He thinks the owner is selfish doesn’t he?
Just a term I used.
He and others “need” single family homes.
So his is a “need” and the truck owner has made a bad moral decision.
I don’t think owning homes is a bad moral decision but I do think they are not sustainable in the long term.
Apparently my view ‘toxic and awful” and John’s view is righteous concern.
Right? But why stop there – living at all is a selfish, personal choice. I suppose those environmentally/sustainably concerned ought to just be offing themselves or else be hypocrites, eh?
Good to see you still keeping it toxic and awful, BB.
Yes, living is a selfish personal choice so if you have children and own a single family home, stop lecturing people about buying a truck.
Sorry if that is too toxic for you.
Being the BP scold is a full time job for you.
I’m sure you think that’s a clever gotcha, but it isn’t. This goes into the weeds about housing and raising a family and the options developers deem fit to construct. There aren’t really good alternatives to living close in with a family. As a society we do really bad about this kind of thing (need more shared spaces, good storage options, etc). Don’t you hear all the time about how hard it is to park a cargo bike in most apartments? We need to take apartment living seriously.
I would gladly see my house bulldozed and turned into a six story apartment building full of affordable family units or town houses. I hope one day that happens. But I don’t have the power to personally make it happen and I live here. So for the time being, I live in a house.
Redfin lists a number of close-in 3 BR condos for sale, and I’m sure that’s only a sliver of the market if you really crave owning an attached unit surrounded by hardscape.
Not saying you should, just saying you could.
Yeah, my reply was short hand and I didn’t do the work to lay out my thoughts.
What it boils down to is that our apartment options are garbage and overpriced. I see a handful of options matching your description, and the cheapest is more than my mortgage and less than 1/3 the size. We don’t build serious apartment options.
If you can afford to buy a house, it makes more sense financially and just for your own benefit (I realize there are other considerations like not being locked down to a location, etc). And that needs to change to actually increase density in cities.
I don’t think it’s immoral to choose the only sensible options available (also part of the meaning of the “no ethical consumption under capitalism” phrase). I agree with BB that single family homes in cities are a problem (they make sustainable transportation harder to achieve), but the key difference is that I don’t think people are doing something wrong when there is no better option. If people drive to work because they can’t afford to live within an hour transit of the Starbucks they work at downtown, that’s a problem with our economy, not personal choices. If they shop on Amazon because Amazon is the only place they can find whatever it is they need without spending inordinate time exploring and doing research, same. (Amazon is a whole other interesting topic even less related to this thread)
Would the 6 units you want to see developed in place of our house be “serious” options, as large as your house or cheaper than your mortgage?
This is exactly how I think about people who choose to drive.
This is some world class spin justifying your home ownership.
You like most people enjoy a single family home for your family.
Completely understandable, no shame in it, so stop judging other people’s choices.
The guy in the big truck may be a single man living in a small apartment and uses half the energy your family consumes.
You suggested people be shamed for their choices, Are you the arbiter of good choices?
Yes, BB, all things are the same as all other things, people are not capable of distinguishing shades of grey. If one thing is slightly bad, it’s the same as the worst thing you can imagine. Driving a Hummer is indistinguishable from using a disposable coffee cup once. Who are we to say any different?
Nonsense.
BB,
your take here seems to be the logical extension of the now popular phrase You do You. I don’t happen to subscribe to that worldview, find it dreadful, and suspect our present predicament is at least partly due to myopically individualist attitudes like that. Judgment is essential, is how we make meaning in the world, forms the basis of our laws and policies, however imperfect and flawed they are.
I happen to think the shaming of people who buy and drive SUVs is anachronistic; is a way to give those of us who drive mere autos a free pass, so we may agree on that small matter. But in my view all fossil fuels (car, train, plane, SUV, NG furnace, AC, internet, smart phone, eating meat, etc.) are problematic. I suspect a smart phone makes fewer demands on the planet than the oversized vacation mobile that stuck in your craw, so distinctions aren’t meaningless, but the point surely is to find out how we all can, individually and collectively, reduce and eventually eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels, on activities that emit so much CO2.
I completely agree with you.
John v is a.big consumer, owns a half million dollar home if it is average in this city.
He wants to shame other people as if owning a home is a “grey’ area the same as owning a large personal vehicle.
There is not much distinction except his house consumes a lot more energy than the biggest pick up truck.
I did not shame him, I just pointed it out.
I did not put out a list of what I think is wasteful and harmful to the planet.
He did.
Owning a home doesn’t increase consumption in any way. Because it’s close in, I don’t have to drive. The house was built a hundred years ago, I had no hand in that. It’s just the kind of housing that is common in Portland. It’s the most economical choice and the only real option since apartments are overpriced. It’d be find if it wasn’t. Sure I could live on the street in a tent for a lower impact, but nobody is suggesting people should try and make their impact as close to 0 as physically possible.
It’s a nonsensical straw you’re trying to grasp at. Nor did I put out a list of what I think is harmful, you hallucinate a lot of stuff to be mad at. What 9watts said is exactly my point – the “you do you” attitude is the problem. We should not treat every choice people make as equally valid or justified, as if we can have no possible insight into other people’s needs. The giant trucks are not justified. There is a theoretically valid use case for them and it does not stack up to the number of those vehicles on the road.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that some things have more impact on the environment than others.
What I, any maybe others, have issue with is you and 9Watts think that only your own list of “bad” is valid and everyone should blindly follow your lists without dispute. Otherwise, if someone speaks out that makes them a “bad” person in your world view.
It just seems you think everything is black and white and there’s nothing in between.
You preach to others about how their choices are bad, but yet, your very own choices say you are being hypocritical.
Everybody thinks their own beliefs are true. That’s what a belief is. As 9watts put it well, it’s the basis for what we make into laws.
I don’t know where this alleged “list” idea comes from. Nobody in this thread had a list. And nobody mentioned blindly following anyone or black and white. I didn’t preach to anyone. No living human can have zero carbon impact, and nobody I take seriously is talking about reducing it as low as possible.
What I’m saying, though, is that the lack of black and white doesn’t mean we can’t make judgments. We can agree driving is unsustainable but that there is a difference between driving a huge Raptor truck and a tiny used Prius. And we shouldn’t be just saying “oh but maybe they need that oversized monstrosity, what do I know?”
‘I didn’t preach to anyone”
You literally said that people should be shamed for not making the choices you do.
You shamed big truck owners, people who live far from work, airline travel, etc.
You live in a totally inefficient single home which is your choice and you defend that choice and claim it’s the only place fit for you to live in or something.
Judgemental as can be about your CHOICE.
Everyone else just needs to make different choices.
The definition of a total hypocrite.
“You live in a totally inefficient single home”
I find it astonishing how much you seem to know about John’s house. Do you also know that much about my single family house which I own?
Aren’t you being a tad judgmental? Without even knowing the particulars?
Do you pay any attention to the thread?
John v stated he lives in a 100 year old SINGLE family home a bout 3 times and has stated that numerous times on this forum.
That is how I know.
The entire topic was created by John who disparaged other peoples choices.
I did not judge at all.
I pointed out that living in a single home is bad for the climate, much like driving big trucks,
The carbon footprint of the house is much larger though.
That is the discussion if you want to catch up.
“he lives in a 100 year old SINGLE family home…The carbon footprint of the house is much larger though…”
I can top that. Mine is 130 years old!! But mine happens to be 600SF and is super insulated, and I don’t heat with any fossil fuels. This is a risk you take by castigating John for his house based on the flimsiest of categorical information.
Maybe John’s house is different than mine, but unlike (most) trucks, houses are vastly more complex, variable, interesting.
It isn’t though. The house exists, it is inert matter. I didn’t build it or get it built, I just moved there. If not for whatever regulations and perverse market dynamics, more people trying to move in closer would cause increased density in the city which is what both of us want. A brand new Ford Raptor is a newly produced hulk that is committing to decades of heavy fuel use. I need to live somewhere, I believe in the benefits of living in a city, and the housing options we have in this city are heavily single family houses. The same isn’t true for the vehicle you drive.
These aren’t comparable things and you don’t need to play dumb and act like they’re indistinguishable.
Unless you think everything everyone else chooses to do is a-ok, and can make no comment on it, you agree with me. Tell me you don’t care about people camping on the streets. Oh, that’s different? Because it might affect you directly? So does people driving oversized gas guzzling monster trucks.
This is all just some dumb whataboutism. “Oh you think people should drive less, yet you buy food in plastic containers? How hypocritical!” Everyone has to live, and living causes pollution of one form or another. It’s about moderating and working to make better choices possible. And when better choices are possible with no downside, yeah I raise an eyebrow (and maybe even say something) about that.
You would agree with me if you weren’t so hell bent on making some stupid own on the internet.
No I don’t agree with you.
I don’t judge an individual action on climate change.
You do that. I don’t think as individuals we have much impact.
You just judge others and somehow justify your use and think you are somehow more climate friendly than the rubes in the big trucks.
Your single family home has 2-1/2 times the carbon footprint of a 5 unit apartment building no matter how insulated it is. (sorry 9watts but it’s true)
I don’t care where you live but you are not helping with climate change and probably not hurting as an individual.
I just think your moralizing and justifying your own lifestyle is nothing but elitist nonsense.
Really? Ok, then why didn’t you say so? You’re one of those. You don’t think it makes any difference what people choose to do. We should just sit and wait for something to happen.
This is exactly the thing I think should change. While I don’t think individual actions will solve climate change (just do your recycling, etc), any sustainable future is going to require some changes. I think people who recognize that but don’t do it themselves now, when feasible, are either hypocrites or in denial about climate change. In order to have any possible future where we address climate change, we have to talk about what we’ll do instead of what we’re doing now so that when people say “no that won’t work” we can say “yes it will, look at what those people are doing.” Because it’s going to be a lot of changes made by individuals. My preference (and only possibility I think could work) is eliminating capitalism, but whether it’s that or something else, something is going to have to change. How do you think that happens?
Some people think we can do no other. That the (“modern”) world just doesn’t work if we don’t get everywhere by driving a car (and I’m just talking about driving because this is BikePortland, but there are other things). That “I have the right to drive a big truck everywhere and nobody can tell me different”. I think we need to illustrate by actions and words that this isn’t the case.
I’m opposed to the existence of new (and old) single family homes both categorically and politically but it’s amazing that you have not heard of solar and/or geothermal heatpumps along with battery storage (LFP). From my perspective, these should be mandatory for everyone over a certain income who owns a loan/home (say 120% of MFI).
“I’m opposed to the existence of new (and old) single family homes both categorically and politically…”
One learns the curiousest things here.
What on earth is wrong with (the category of) single family houses?
If someone built an oversized truck out of wood and powered it with beans I’d be all over it, enjoy it along with the inventor.
If someone builds a dwelling with four exterior walls but uses no fossil fuels to live in it, what on earth is the problem?!
The categorical condemnations of various objects here are utterly lacking in imagination and nuance.
Are there irresponsible, wasteful, egregiously ostentatious single family houses? trucks? bicycles? heating systems? swimming pools? Sure. But why paint with such a broad brush?
“Your single family home has 2-1/2 times the carbon footprint of a 5 unit apartment building no matter how insulated it is.”
2.5x – How many significant figures are you willing to attach to your claim, BB? This is hilarious nonsense. As if all five-unit apartment buildings were the same? Or all houses? When was the five-unit apartment building you have in mind built? A hundred years ago, or last month? How many people live in each unit?
Let’s assume the units in your apartment building are 650sf (I just looked that up here: https://www.apartments.com/rent-market-trends/portland-or/)
And let’s further assume that an average of 2 people live in that apartment (see https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/OR/Portland-Demographics.html)
Now 2.5 people live in my 600 SF house, so where exactly does the 2.5x come from, BB? Are we comparing energy and water consumption? Embodied energy of the building materials? Give it to me straight.
What do you know about carbon footprints of various dwelling types that I don’t?
“Your single family home has 2-1/2 times the carbon footprint of a 5 unit apartment building no matter how insulated it is.”
I assume you mean to compare a single family house with one of the units in a five-unit apartment building?
BB? Hello?
I don’t. I do (fully) agree that driving fossil gasoline powered vehicles is unsustainable, but am more open to the possibility that other driving formats could be, broadly speaking, sustainable. Unless you assert that there is no conceivable way to move around in a vehicle in a sustainable manner, then we agree on this point.
“and everyone should blindly follow your lists without dispute”
You don’t seem to know me at all, or read what I write very carefully. I love argument, dispute, back and forth. That is how I learn. But at the end of the day some folks articulate better arguments than others, exhibit a relationship to sincerity along a spectrum. My view on why we have conversations here is to learn, try out what we think is true and see how it holds up under scrutiny, whether and more importantly how folks tear it apart.
Watts and I, for instance, have been arguing here since long (a decade?) before he was Watts. We don’t agree on much, but it is interesting to sharpen our swords, rub against one another’s arguments.
We don’t do this, at all. There are many, many choices I could make that society would broadly deem “invalid” or “unjustified”, or even “illegal”.
Giant trucks are not (yet) in that category, but who knows — maybe they someday will be.
It doesn’t happen if we all just pretend everyone should be free to choose whatever vehicle they want. Almost like we need to make some judgment about it.
There’s nothing to “pretend” about — I can’t currently drive any vehicle I want. We have a lengthy list of things we require vehicles to do/have to be deemed acceptable (i.e. street-legal). That standard is constantly changing, and will continue to evolve over time, likely continuing to trend towards less polluting, more efficient, and safer.
In the meantime, you are free to judge people in any way you want.
Or the left-wing version:
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism (so don’t you dare criticize personal consumption choices).
Yeah I think that’s a lazy one. It’s true, I agree with it in general, but when trying to articulate a utopian future, I think it’s important to at least think about how problems like transportation and global warming are dealt with. We have to face the reality of a limited planet and that’s gonna mean less pointless consumption any way you slice it.
But a smart phone, for example? Or at least some phone? Or a bike? You need that, and there is no ethical consumption under capitalism 🙂
Buy one used. That’s what I do, and it’s fine. No ethical quandary for me.
Nope, that increases the value of the phone in the first place because it increases its resale value. So you’re still fueling the profits of big corporations which operate via exploitation (by definition, from a leftist perspective) since they can charge a higher price. You can’t escape it. That’s the meaning of the “no ethical consumption” phrase.
Of course it’s better than buying a new phone, which was my point in the first place – there are shades of grey and you can do more or less ethical consumption.
(sorry if this posted multiple times, there was some http 500 error submitting)
The dynamics that drive the phone market are not based on resale potential; they’re based on chasing the latest thing. I simply do not worry about third order effects when a decision based on the first order effects is so easy.
The concept of “no ethical consumption” seems as rational to me as “the earth is flat”, so I’m not really concerned with how my behavior intersects that concept.
The larger problem is not moral. Its that the wealthy and powerful are immune to regulation. You can’t tell Bill Gates he can’t fly his private jet, live in a huge mansion that has to be heated and cooled and own several other mansions But we can force some poor schmuck to take the bus by raising the price of gas beyond what they can afford. Who has the larger carbon footprint?
We need to stop talking about morality and start passing regulations that force everyone to change their behavior. We can start by rationing gasoline and reducing speed limits to 10 mph. Make everyone travel at that speed and there will be an immediate reduction in emissions as people travel less and use less polluting means.
This is partly true. You can do those things. One could make Bill Gates pay an immense amount of money to do those things, such that he either does less (unlikely) or you have boat loads of money to mitigate some of his damage. That always runs into the usual fear mongering about taxing rich (and runs into the conflict of interest that the people doing this regulation expect to benefit from the lack of that regulation too). But it could be done. It was done at one point in our history.
Absolutely. As some here would be keen to point out, if you had the political will to do this, people would probably be changing their behavior already. I’m wondering if the best you could do is regulate some of the extremes because fewer people are there, but in the case of (for e.g.) oversized trucks they’re becoming more common such that there would be too much pushback. I don’t know, maybe Oregon could actually get the votes to do something serious like what you say.
So I think we’re back to morality/moralizing. I know a lot of people feel no shame about extravagant consumption, but for those who recognize it is a problem, I just want to normalize calling that immoral. Not just an equally valid personal choice. And where people can do no other we need to of course give them good alternatives.
“Class 3 comes with a speedometer, and I could see having a speed limit on MUPs.
ebikes are already not permitted on sidewalks in OR. MUPs are wider and have plenty of space for both peds and cyclists (not to mention far fewer conflict points).”
This assumes we can have something like meaningful enforcement.
We don’t have this for an awful lot of car-driving scofflaws.
Until proven otherwise, I won’t assume that it gets magically better for those riding on faster e-bikes.
My figures were approximate, and based on total weight rather than a list of materials. They’re also hard to refute. Any bike that has pedals is a tiny fraction of any car. Two percent is reasonable, especially if you’re starting with raw materials to make either bikes or cars. E-bike motors and batteries are in similar proportion to EVs.
A figure that I didn’t include is, there are now a billion motor vehicles in the world. I’m distrustful of any initiative meant to add to that figure.
9watts has a good point that recycling is not 100 percent efficient. It goes better if manufacturing incorporates recycling into original design. We’d get fewer parts with plastic bonded to metal.
Seven percent, or even ten percent might have been a better guess than five. In this hypothetical, if we set out to recycle 70 million cars, we’d get pretty good at it.