Happy Twin Cities Bike to Work Day! Your Bike Ride is Environmentally Meaningless
Today, May 18th, is the Twin Cities Bike to Work Day.
Biking to work is a great way to get your daily exercise (I rode my bike 11 miles into work this morning) but don’t let that granola-eating, eco-conscious co-worker of yours pretend they are morally superior to you just because they biked into work this morning and you didn’t.
Because in the grand scheme of things, their morning bike ride did nothing to save the planet.
Here are a few things you can say to this co-worker if they start to get too preachy about the environmental virtues of cycling.
- The amount of CO2 emissions emitted by all of the cars, trucks, and semi’s in Minnesota is about 29 million metric tons, which is about 0.07 percent of the global emissions of carbon dioxide.
- Even if we stopped using fossil-fuel powered cars completely, it would be have zero impact on global warming.
- Assuming a round-trip commute of 20 miles, and assuming you burn a whole gallon of gas on your commute (which isn’t likely) you would have saved 20 pounds of CO2 from going into the air.
- That amounts to 0.0000000000237% of annual CO2 emissions from around the globe!
If your eco-conscious co-worker begins to feel hopelessly small and insignificant after hearing these facts, please do the right thing…
If they’re also vegan, let them know that hamburger you had for lunch was delicious.
Have a great weekend, everyone, and enjoy this great biking weather!