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> I have to consume more food. Most people probably don't, and many people could afford to both run to work and eat less.

• thinkingemote 7y ago
  My environmental studies prof did an experiment cycling and getting the bus to university on both the amounnt of money spent and energy consumed. He found that he would spend more if cycling than the bus fare on food to keep the same energy input equal. People also generally cannot sustain eating less continually but obviously there's a health benefit from some changes. The ecosystem approach to food energy and carbon brings some surprising convulsions too. For example wrapping and selling fruit in plastic bags is better than buying them loose. This doesn't make sense unless you think about the whole picture. I suspect that the recent HN craze for indiscriminate feel good tree planting is also ecologically and sustainably suspect if looked at holistically.
• probablypower 7y ago
  You're right that a lot of people eat more than they should, and exercise less than they should. We aren't efficient in this regard. Yet when a human exercises, they breathe more, and produce more CO2. There is an internal carbon cycle that must be maintained. If any person exercises more without changing their diet, their rate of 'carbon accumulation' (to be kind) will decrease. For someone like myself who isn't in the habit of accumulating carbon - a long-term impact of riding to work will be that I will lose weight [0]. As a carbon-based life form, if I don't change this to be non-negative, I'm clearly down a path of self-destruction, and will need to increase my food intake eventually. [0] - https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f407/588843385c964c7de0bc9e680499c806c734.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f407/588843385c964c7de0bc9e...