Do you cycle for or at least partly for Enviromental reasons ?

Do you ride a bicylcle for Enviromental reasons ?

  • Fully

    Votes: 1 0.6%
  • Partly

    Votes: 76 46.3%
  • Not at all

    Votes: 87 53.0%

  • Total voters
    164
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ianrauk

Tattooed Beat Messiah
Location
Rides Ti2
No I ride my bikes because I love riding bikes.

This....In spades
 

classic33

Leg End Member
Some more analysis

A fully loaded bus is responsible for 2.6-times the carbon emissions total of a bicycle per passenger mile. But the night and weekend service ruins the bus’s overall environmental credentials. Off-peak buses account for more than 20 times as many greenhouse gases as a bicycle.

From

https://slate.com/technology/2011/08/how-soon-does-a-bike-pay-back-its-initial-carbon-footprint.html
Not one of my cycles has had or got an exhaust fitted, so can't emit any gasses.
 

jayonabike

Powered by caffeine & whisky
Location
Hertfordshire
No not at all. I cycle to work as it’s less than 2 miles away. I cycle for enjoyment at weekends. I also drive a 3 litre bm and don’t feel guilty about it at all, in fact it puts a smile on my face every time I get behind the wheel.
 

Pat "5mph"

A kilogrammicaly challenged woman
Moderator
Location
Glasgow
No.
My main reason for cycling is to go places: I hate driving, I'm also very bad at it.
Cycling gets me where I want to be faster and cheaper than public transport.
I like the social aspect too: through group riding I have met many new friends, been to places I would otherwise never have seen.
I get bored in pubs and don't drink alcohol, if it wasn't for the group rides I would never socialize.
 

Ming the Merciless

There is no mercy
Location
Inside my skull
I use the bike over the car in all possible circumstances, for environmental reasons. I reformed and became very anti air pollution following the death of neighbours daughter from asthma, who I unsuccessfully gave CPR to. That kind of shizzle gives you a major recalibration.

That must have been awful. I hate reading about the stunted lung development of children due to pollution. Cars have a place but more inter city than intra city. Approx 90% of short car trips could be replaced by walking and cycling. Many residential roads ought to be made one way to make those short trips a pain in the arse for the person in a car but easy by foot or bike.
 
I started out cycling for the benefits to health, wealth, and the environment (local, global and personal), however I must admit its become more orientated to the personal benefits.
 

EltonFrog

Legendary Member
No . When I cycle, which is not often it’s for fun, I sometimes do a utility ride to the shops on my bike but that is to save money and time. I doubt there’s a significant environmental saving in the cycling I do, and certainly not helped by the twenty five thousand miles a year driving I do.
 
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subaqua

What’s the point
Location
Leytonstone
Not really. I am a lifelong cyclist and just love being on the bike. I use the bike where I can but I do not for instance load up the panniers and do multiple food shops with panniers. Mostly though I move around locally by bike. I do roughly twice as much mileage on the bike as car with the car being used for trips away, visits to distant relatives.

I do get frustrated with how hard it can be to take your bike with you on the train at times. There are trips I would do by bike and train instead of car if there was some joined up thinking in that area.

I used about a tank of fuel once every 8 weeks


This.

It really winds me up you can book train tickets and a seat weeks in advance and not cycle space at same time. Yes GWR and Virgin this means you.
 
Location
London
Nope. I ride a bike made from plastics and alloys, the production of which pollutes at every stage of the process so I'm not conceited or deluded enough to pretend my bike is environmentally sound.
If you ride it instead of driving it is. And keep it running/give it away/pass it on rather than scrapping it for next year's model it is. Very little stuff has no environmental impact in its manufacture.
 

Alan O

Über Member
Location
Liverpool
Other than one summer when I was 17, I've never owned or driven a car, and cycling has never been an alternative to that. My commuter journeys over the years have always been by public transport or by bicycle. By bike because it's so much more pleasant, unless the weather is foul, or because there was no public transport. I spent a winter once living at Sandbanks in Poole (back in the days when you could rent an almost unheated holiday home for peanuts in the winter), and I had no option but to cycle to work as there were no buses outside of the summer season. One particularly miserable ride is still etched in my memory, when we'd had a rare heavy snowstorm and I was riding in heavy rain and howling wind the next day. But I digress.

I very much am an environmentalist and I'm very supportive of the use of bikes for that purpose, and that's to a large extent down to my having traveled a lot and seen so much of the natural beauty of the planet. The loss of Himalayan glaciers that provide so much of the dry season irrigation to parts of Northern India? I've trekked alongside the Khumbu glacier in Nepal, and its loss would be a tragedy.

Or the seasonal variations in the Tonlé Sap lake and river system in Cambodia, which is the result of an amazing natural cycle (seriously, check it out on Wikipedia), producing a fish resource that's essential in a poor and developing country. It could be destroyed by global warming and millions could lose a critical food source - just so rich people in the developed world can carry on driving their big cars. I've been there too, and my most endearing memory is of disarmingly friendly and welcoming people who have suffered a truly horrible recent history, but who are among the best people I've ever encountered.

The fertile north-eastern plateau of Thailand produces vast quantities of rice which feeds millions, and it's among the best quality rice in the world. But the essential rainy season is becoming increasingly erratic, and what used to be frequent double harvests are becoming rarer. It's a high-density food resource, and we can't afford to lose it. My wife of 30 years is from a long line of Thai rice farmers.

I could go on... but then I'm held back by the miles I've flown in the course of my travels, and my resulting feelings of hypocrisy. Long-distance high-altitude flying is especially damaging, and over the past 30 years I've averaged probably 2 or 3 such flights per year. So who am I to preach to others?
 
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