National Bike Month & Carbon Footprint

5/1/2019

OPEN Cycles UPPER in familiar company, mingling in the carbon ashes of a fire- pit, someplace from whence it came.

I’m so glad that I found out today that “Global Warming” is a hoax, this way I don’t have to ride my bike to work any more. Anyway we've had biblical rain, and I'm tired of it. I read the news today, oh boy, about a lucky man who saved the planet. He did so, by sticking his head in the sand, and when he pulled it out, he convinced his influential pseudo-scientist friends that “Global Warming” was a farce. For so long I had been worrying about the constant rain, that floods all the underpasses, and basements. I was concerned that it really shouldn’t snow in warm places, and certainly shouldn’t snow in May. As local rivers burst their banks, and bomb cyclones and tornadoes thrash great-plains towns, it’s comforting to know that people didn’t have any hand in the acceleration of extreme weather. I’m so happy to know that someone just made-up a myth to help explain why my summers are shorter and hotter, and my winters are longer dry and far colder. I’d thought that I’d agreed with science, when they told me why post card mountains were no longer snow-capped. It’s great to know it’s all a hoax. I’m going to bike to work anyway, but, “Global Warming”, is a bad label, because it doesn’t explain why some places are getting colder, so let’s call it “Climate Change”. This way we can account for all of the extraordinary weather sweeping the globe, which of course is not really happening. So while we are making shit up, and whether the rain ever let's up, or not... let's share the ideal of "Bike to Work" and "National Bike Month"

Graph from 2000 to 2013 Courtesy League of American Bicyclists Click Image for PDF

Typical Air Pollution Can Cause Stroke Photo Courtesy of Indian Express May 2, 2019

Iron Eyes Cody, The most famous Native American for Half a Century.

"Climate Change, is caused by Carbon, Hamburgers, & Ride-share, right?, not people..."
A few observable excessive phenomena may contribute to extraordinary weather episodes are: Trash, Deliveries, and Ride-share, all of these are at a scale which we've never witnessed before. All of them sadden me like that iconic 1971 native, Iron Eyes Cody touring a trashed planet. The video we watched growing up is linked HERE. It's not surprising that when I ride my bike to work, 3 out of five cars have a border-state license plate, a ride-share tag, and a single passenger in the back seat. During “rush hour” there seems to be a giant increase in ride-share traffic, and a proportional decrease to Public Transit, Bikes and Pedestrians. Come to think of it, I was wondering yesterday why the French and Italians don’t “work out” like Americans, and think it might have to do with their walk to: work, lunch, the grocery, the bar, cafe, etc… When we ride-share, we encourage people to not ride their bike to work. May is Bike to work month, and when we take a Lyft, we collectively encourage a doe-eyed suburbanite to cluelessly drive through the density of the city to chauffeur lazy Millennials around while both the driver and the passenger stare at their phone’s glowing screen. Normally I’d say "live and let live", but because it’s “Bike to Work Month” could we please watch the road for bikes?, or learn to drive without blankly staring at a screen?, Please!!.
Today, when I take out the trash, every can is full of delivery cartons, plastic, and foam packaging, and the streets are regularly blocked with delivery vans. It’s tough to put the trash out, because the overflow of whole cardboard and packaging is everywhere. Five years ago one trash can per house would suffice, now each needs three. It’s good to know that somebody comes each week to take all of my shit away by some magical sleight of hand, but where does it actually go? It used to go to China, Indiana, Barges, and Hulking incinerators, but now it just piles up in my alley. I think it may be nice to save all of my neighbors whole cartons, and trash (offsite) for a year, and then return one sunny afternoon in May, and pile it in their yard. What a strange annual lottery we could have, if some un-witting neighbor who never broke down boxes nor sorted their recycling, got it all re-delivered one fateful Earth-day. I think the pile would exceed the volume of their home.
Perhaps that sort of lottery would incentivize people to see the scale of the issue. Perhaps it has nothing to do with Climate Change, but could it be that a steep penalty or tax on new boxes, and deliveries could offset or shift the status-quo mounds of shit piling up?

Riding and walking is simple, and even fun, but why bother, when some poor slob can do it for you. It’s not that I’m advocating a single child policy, but have you looked around at how many people there are? Quite a lot… We seem to be in need of companionship, But do we need to keep a driver and delivery guy, on staff. Seems like we first get a dog or two, (and we can't be bothered to open the lid to ditch their poop bags) -- Then we get a few SUV’s, and then a larger house, and then a few kids, and before you know it the carbon foot-print is quite a bit larger than when they were in college. In college most of my furniture was second hand. In fact now that you are in full consumer acceleration making diapers, and such, with a few kids, the shoe shopping really accelerates, and a critical mass of boxes begins to mount.
Today you may have masonry blocks propping up your make-shift shelving, and a door slab set atop two saw horses for a desk, and you may be drinking from your only thrift-store, cup, or coffee mug, and that’s O.K. …Actually that’s kind-of ideal from an environmental perspective. So, you are not the problem… yet. Until you start the new job, and ride-share to and from everywhere, (even during Bike to Work Month). Your dog is not the problem, but when you consider the Food delivery for both you and Scraps, and the cardboard, utensils, and packaging, from Chewy, boxed-meals, and take-out food, we just don’t compress and up-cycle like the Market down the street. The local Grocer is selling their compressed cardboard back to a paper mill, and re-selling it to you, so you can buy soft tissue, and wipe your butt. I think if everyone could pump the brakes a bit on buying everything in a package, and then having the same delivered by a truck in yet another box, with foam peanuts; We may find that the neighbors (whom you’ve never met thanks to delivery and Netflix) are actually friendly engaging people. When you walk your own dog, in-stead of having a service pick them up, you can perhaps meet the neighbors walking theirs. If you visit the grocery on your own, you may be able to skip the gym. If you bike to work this month, you could use your ride-share money to eat ice-cream, which won’t go to your waistline, because you rode to work…

I know it’s all a environmentally unsound, but you could eat ice-cream every night, and not work out at all — and still be fit and happy. If you'd walk your own dog, walk to the store, prepare your own meals, shop for your own stuff, and ride to work, you are basically "French". All of this suave behavior can be done while meeting and interacting with other people, who may become your best friend, or the one you settle-in with to watch Netflix.

I’m no saint myself, and I do have a lot of shoes that I don’t wear, (I can only wear one pair at a time). Would you know it?, the ones I don’t love were all purchased “on-line”. The ones I wear daily, I got at a store. You know those tidy white boxes with glass, and easy-listening music? --The store, not the shoes... Anyway, you can actually buy shoes in a store, and see how you like them before you pay. That store also recycles their cardboard boxes, compacting them clean and flat to be reused so you don’t have to pile them whole behind my house. If you buy shoes at the store, you can ask them to keep the box, and you can ride home wearing your new shoes, like you did when you were five. Romantic.
I’m glad that I have plenty of stuff, but stuff takes it’s toll on the environment. I'm trying to offset my carbon foot-print by owning more carbon bikes, (e.g. repurpose Carbon to offset it's global increase). I may be using some bad math, as excess carbon bikes have loads of metal parts which net a ton of energy, and waste, to produce. I do ride them however, every day. I never drive to work, nor to the store, nor to the shore, or even to camp, so I am at least pretending to do my part riding my carbon. Just the same, Climate change is(n’t) real, so you can relax on the couch, and continue to wreck the earth with cardboard delivery boxes, gas, smog, ride-share, styrofoam, and other pollutants, such as cheeseburgers.
Mmmm! Cheeseburgers...!! Did you know that factory farming produces an average 16% of greenhouse gas emissions, 17% for Beef... While cars and Trucks about 14%. Here is the rub; It is worse to eat a burger (ecologically) than to drive there to get one. The real issue is that greenhouse gasses such as methane from cattle production is 23 times more hazardous to the environment than C02 from your car. You could however, eat all of the burgers you want, if you could cut some of the other junk from your wasteful world. Nobody wants to hear that they've, "...Pretty much always been a dick-head, and that's why, we need to break-up", but the facts show that White People's fetish with beef, is hugely bad for Climate Change.
Here is the reason we need to break up with Beef, a study on food–energy–water impacts of the average American diet by demographic group, published 25, March 2019, by Bozeman, Bozeman, and Theis, finds that Beef really is the worst food for the environment.
Perhaps when you do get your next meal (if you didn’t already have it delivered), and you did take ride-share today, then you should offset some of your misplaced Carbon, and some Methane, and choose to eat something else.
If you became that one person in a thousand, who rode their bike to work every sunny day in May. Congratulate yourself and eat whatever you want, perhaps a cheeseburger, and make a plan to ride a bit more this year. May is “Bike to Work Month”, and you are saving the planet, compared to your deadbeat neighbors, who are jointly responsible for the constant rain.