Dr. Christian Brand from the University of Oxford, a contributor to The Climate Book, offers some positive ideas about the future of "active travel."
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Focusing solely on electric vehicles and technology that is not proven at scale is actually slowing down the path to zero emissions — it diverts resources and political will away from other solutions. In reality, if we are to meet the decarbonization targets of the Paris Agreement by 2050, we also need to focus on the movement of people and goods — and look at introducing traffic reduction targets.
Only by curbing all motorized transport, particularly private cars, as quickly as possible can we tackle the climate and air pollution crises — or so my colleague and friend Jillian Anable and I argue in a chapter of Greta Thunberg's recently published The Climate Book.
Transport is one of the most challenging sectors to decarbonize because of its heavy fossil fuel use and reliance on carbon-intensive infrastructure — such as roads, airports and the vehicles themselves—and the way it embeds car-dependent lifestyles. One way to reduce transport emissions relatively quickly, and potentially globally, is to swap cars for cycling, e-biking and walking — active travel, as it is called.
As many as 50% of car journeys are of less than five km and could easily be replaced by active travel. Electric bikes increase this range to 10 km or more. They have become more popular over the past few years as prices have come down. These bikes allow older people to cycle and help riders cycle in hilly areas. But they still provide physical activity. They could be the answer to our commuting problems.
In our own research, we have shown that people who walk, cycle or use e-bikes have lower carbon footprints from all their daily travel, including in cities where lots of people are already doing this. Strikingly, the carbon footprint for daily travel is up to 84% smaller for people who walk or cycle than for people who use other modes of transport. Emissions from cycling can be more than 30 times lower for each trip than driving a fossil fuel car, and about ten times lower than driving an electric one.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://phys.org/news/2022-11-expert-comment-future-electric-fast.html
GET THE BOOK -- https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/709837/the-climate-book-by-greta-thunberg/
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction #Pollution #Bike #WarOnCars #BanCars
It's probably not terribly positive that just about everything we buy these days has made in China stamped on it as that implies massive pollution in simply transporting the goods to Europe or America!
