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I read somewhere that if you’re not at least mostly vegan, e-bikes actually have lower lifecycle carbon emissions than bikes because you end up burning fewer ca
by elil17 4y ago
I read somewhere that if you’re not at least mostly vegan, e-bikes actually have lower lifecycle carbon emissions than bikes because you end up burning fewer calories and eating less (assuming you don’t substitute in more exercise).
- jvm___ 4y agoSo. Lithium battery powered humans would emit less carbon than regular humans?
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoThey would since we could charge them using PV instead of wasteful bovines.
- snewman 4y agoThat makes a lot of sense. Intuitively (I haven't tried to run numbers on this), the big efficiency problem with a car – gas or EV – is not that it's using "unnatural" forms of power, it's that you're hauling a 3000 pound vehicle around with your 160 pound human. It's easy to believe that photovoltaic power -> modern battery -> electric motor is far more efficient than photosynthesis -> animal digestion -> human digestion -> human muscle. I wouldn't be shocked if that held up even on a vegan diet, though the difference would be a rounding error compared to the emissions from other aspects of our lives.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoIt’s plausible especially if you use PVs to charge. But what about the costs in producing and disposing of the batteries?
- hammock 4y agoYes, sedentary lifestyles require less overall energy input vs. active ones