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Allow me a little game: what the Dutch who do most of their trip by bike eat? Because today too many pseudo-ecologist claim the live at 0km, meaning they do any
Allow me a little game: what the Dutch who do most of their trip by bike eat? Because today too many pseudo-ecologist claim the live at 0km, meaning they do anything in a small enough area to move just by feet and bike. HOWEVER they omit in their computing the other humans who work to serve them.
Time ago a friend claim he live at 0km and we start a little game: let's show what you eat&drink! The 0km bread bought from a local shop actually was made with a flower+the rest prepared by a local company roughly 800km away, with the flower itself from Ukraine, leavening agents from Turkey, salt from Spain. Oh that's just the bread. The locally bought seasonal fruits, let's say and apple came from north-est Italy, and I choose the apple as an example because they are normally collected one season before stored in a CO₂-saturated place and oxygenated a bit before going to customers-stores (so they look bright and big). If we try the locally bought "fresh" shrimp some are from India, some from Ecuador, they are fresh (in temperature sense) for sure, but seeing their color they are ALSO pre-cooked with a bit of steam before being packed and so on.
Personally having left (few years BEFORE covid) the dense European urbe for the Alps I change a bit my behaviors like I now bought not-that-small quantity of anything and stock them at home, it's MORE comfy for me, just going to the garage opening some freezer/wardrobes etc instead of going shopping just for a single item. The result is that compared I produce FAR LESS packages waste, I tend to eat more healthy foods and I even tend to pay most of the LESS. Stock them is also not that complicated at all, yes it might took a bit of time regularly, but it's really a little bit, and a small investments in fridges/freezer and so on. But again NOTHING really "extreme". I have two cars, one diesel one electric, I refuel both at home, the diesel one with a 1000l liters jar with a simple tube+spilling pistol filled up casually by a tank truck, witch means I and the supply chain combined burn LESS fuel to resupply than those who resupply continuously with their own engines. Again, nothing really special. Diesel it's not explosive, does not produce dangerous gases and can be stored for very long periods. Oh, and at any (regular) strike I never have to go wasting hours to resupply for having a bit of a very small reserve.
Long story short: PROBABLY (I can't compute everything) the most sustainable way of living is being spread in large not too dense, not too little dense areas pushing a distributed economy coupled with an effective PUBLIC logistic platform (to avoid the old classic Rockefeller/Standard Oil or now Amazon "market distortions") where we can evolve, meaning the density is sufficient to interact, have a reborn economy of scale that's now totally lost in cities, but not too much to impede redesign of anything, starting from residential buildings who can't really evolve in dense cities in Green New Deal terms or even in mere "they are EOL, we need to demolish them before they collapse", where there is room to evolve. Let's say future drone deliveries, fly cars etc. ALSO such areas are FAR LESS problematic to handle in case of catastrophic events (not even extreme like a nuclear strike eh! Just mere floods, wildfires, earthquakes, landslides etc).
This probably live a big problem: too much population? That probably imply without having the gut to tell it directly that someone want to push "waste" humanity in modern slavery situations depicted as nice walled gardens, eco friendly etc. The issue is that such move can't work well not only for those internees but for the humanity at a whole. We are a society, it's normal to have rich and poor, but more than a certain level the result is a crash unhealthy for ALL.
> HOWEVER they omit in their computing the other humans who work to serve them.
HOWEVER, this argument isn't relevant to the discussion about the benefits of "cycling like the Dutch" on global emissions.
The additional calories for cycling are small compared to the fuel needed to lug around several tons of car with you.
The argument is simple, maybe I was not that clear in my poor English: people who CLAIM to live on feet and bike so to be eco-friendly are not because to live like that they need others to pollute much on their behalf.
So they can state "hey, look, I'm good at my carbon score" in a hypocritically blind argument purposely ignoring the fact that their lifestyle in a small area of Earth to be sustained demand much pollution elsewhere while living on private cars in vast Rivieras do pollute GLOBALLY much LESS.
So people can try to reduce pollution living in single-family MODERN homes, with renewables, buying food in large quantity and stock at home OR claim to have reduced THEIR OWN pollution making someone else pollute more for them.
This sounds like the "We Should Improve Society Somewhat" meme.
"I want to be more eco-friendly." "And yet you do things that are not eco-friendly. I am very intelligent."
Your 0km friend must be particularly ignorant as to not realize that his coffee, his wine, his beer, his meat, his flour, his electricity, his phone, his clothes, and so on, are not made in the same place where he lives. This is highly a-typical - nothing to base an argument on.
The localvores I've heard about use the phrase "Marco Polo exception" to allow 'anything your average 13th century explorer might have brought back from distant lands. So: pepper, and turmeric, and even the odd knob of ginger root stayed in the larder.'
> living on private cars in vast Rivieras do pollute GLOBALLY much LESS
Citation needed.
Single-family homes are more expensive per person than shared buildings. You have higher heating bills because you have no common walls with others.
You have worse economy of scale in your water, sewage, power supply, and internet and phone service provider. Or, if you have your own well, or septic system, you have to spend more time to maintain it.
You must dedicate more room to storage or spend more time resource planning - if a light bulb burns out, I can walk to the store to buy a replacement while you either go without for a while, or you store more extras than I do, or you keep better track of your bulbs than I do. (The same applies for every consumable: batteries, toothpaste, tape, etc.)
You have to drive to visit the doctor, dentist, barber, and so on, while I can walk or take shared mass transit with frequent service. Assuming you have older kids, they need to travel school and visit friends.
Even the road to your house is more expensive to maintain than one in a city, which adds to your carbon footprint.
But even that is hand-waving on my part. So, to the literature! Here are snippets from three papers I found:
] Studies using the consumer's carbon footprint method usually reveal only small differences, either in favour off or against emission savings in cities. What are the reasons for the balance to shift in one or the other direction? This article, based on Germany, points to higher emissions in rural areas, while our own follow-up study on Bavaria shows the opposite: higher emissions in cities (Gill and Schubert, under review). - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180091631360X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180091...
] Predominantly urban households contribute to about 650 kgCO2 e/cap less on average compared to their rural counterparts on the regional level of data aggregation. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa6da9/pdf https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa6da9/...
] In Eastern Europe, carbon footprints ... increase clearly with the increasing degree of urbanisation. By contrast, in some Western European countries, such as France and
Belgium, carbon footprints clearly decrease with the increasing degree of urbanisation, even when income is controlled. Overall in the studied countries, carbon footprints are 7% lower in cities than in rural areas when income and household characteristics are controlled. However, this is compensated by the 6% higher average income in cities. - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab443d/pdf https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab443d/...
Looks like the research evidence is that rural populations like where you live do NOT "pollute GLOBALLY much LESS" than urban populations like where you used to live.
> These included examples from Germany (where different regions had different urban/rural balance) and France (where rural had more CO2 emissions).
Not to being rude but such computations are not science, are just game based on arbitrary assumptions... A "TCO of pollution" need a damn large model who simulate all people consumption traced to their sources, counting relevant processes in between + simulate different theoretically realistic arrangements changing some parameters. AFAIK no such models exists probably simply because it's not much in fashion reasoning in global terms instead of focusing on single specific aspects and perhaps it's so long and complex that most fear anyone can spot small errors practically not really important, but weaponized to discredit the whole design...
> Do you have evidence for that? You need, what, 100 meter of street per house?
A simple empirical evidence: do a large Riviera need many simple roads or big dorsals? I mean why we need a big highway? Typically to connect a dense area to another because many people and goods travel from some "hub" (in network theory speaking) while a almost-hub-less network do need more small links to traverse it from anywhere to anywhere. Now if you agree with that try to imaging how impacting is building such expensive highways vs small roads. Not much in absolute terms (like how many rocks, asphalt etc you need) but in relative terms of local impact on climate and nature.
It's the same for a fully watertight city area vs a sparse urbanized one: both roads are watertight, but in a city there is a very large watertight surface who push water in few directions, in the riviera water goes everywhere so you do not get much "river" effect that alter local water system. Similarly for small roads you do not need to destroy entire mountains, create giant infra that alter local wind and so on.
> Flight is energy intensive. Either you have heavy batteries (making the flight even more expensive) or you've got hydrocarbons, which currently means fossil fuel.
Sure, so far, BUT that's anyway our path for various reasons, climate and social change included who need to move people and so having "movable infra", something not doable with roads or rails but doable by air and water. Also we have to compute the cost of vehicle + it's use vs crafting a whole road/rail etc infra and keeping it up. Again it's a damn complex model but it's not a new idea that by air is almost at the same cost even if we can't move anything by air... It's not me but
https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-report.pdf https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... who claim that's the future. They claim for urban mobility but I think that's definitively crazy, while it's perfectly doable in a large riviera, and I doubt McKinsey do not have though that...
> Batched ground transport is more fuel efficient.
That's theoretically true, practically false: public transports are efficient when are a bit loaded, but to be effective they need to operate 24/7/365 witch means OR they accept to be far less efficient than private transports MOST of the time or they simply run only for efficient usages and so people need anyway a private transport and having both is still less efficient that using only one. Even in Swiss, to cite a fresh article: https://www.thelocal.ch/20230109/opinion-trains-in-switzerland-are-excellent-so-why-are-cars-still-king https://www.thelocal.ch/20230109/opinion-trains-in-switzerla...
> My point is that this means you don't have any cost sharing with your neighbors. Each house needs enough to cover its peak use, and likely each person need to know how to maintain the local equipment, and have the tools for the additional maintenance.
That's another classic problem, still unsolved. In the recent past for instance teleheating was sold as and eco-friendly cheap and simple way: you get hot water from some industry cooling systems who need to push heat out and you are happy. Now those who choose that path cry that their heating prices have skyrocketed... Similarly nowadays in UE homes are FAR cheaper than apartments in operational expense terms. The issue essentially is "if we are all smart and fair anything is simpler sharing stuff", but the big if tend to be valid for limited period of time...
The city water tower is a good example: in theory individual homes get water and have nothing but keep up normal home pipes. Nice. In practice it means that an accident on the system is a general emergency since anyone are without water. If you have a bit of reserve at home, EVERY HOME, than the emergency is far less urgent and so maintenance and design costs goes down. You do not need a hyper-quick team 24/7 ready to run, with anything needed immediately available for instance. For electricity it's the same: a spread Rivieras grid with homes capable of few hours autonomous power it's far less costly than a dense grid that must reduce downtime to the extreme. There is a storm and some transformers burn? Oh, no issue we will change them tomorrow vs push people in the middle of a stormy night with all they need to change it ASAP. We users do not feel those costs but they are still there.
> Actually, probably less because I would have more to maintain the house.
And how much time you save having cut the trip to the office ALL working days?
> You do know that many people like to be in the city for easy access to restaurants, clothes shopping, the library, clubs, socializing with friends, lectures, political demonstrations, parades, churches, festivals, and more, right?
Yes, BUT I know that if enough people flee the city those who want it can only keep it up alone, witch is a doomed to fail effort... BTW in terms of ease of access: try to move in a dense EU city and in a vast riviera... It's often easier do 100km in a riviera than 10 in a city. Personal experience...
> It's not like wide-scale ownership of personal automobiles is sustainable either. I mean, your lifestyle requires two cars. What happens if, due to age or illness, you no longer have the physical ability to drive? What do you do then?
That's a issue common everywhere: if we do not die young at a certain point we need help. But help in a riviera it's not much different than in a city, for instance it means having someone who gives you food, help you move etc, evolution is the answer: we are near self-driving cars, in the future even if not tomorrow, we will have them. In the future we will have likely much more automation that allow elders to remain autonomous for a larger timeframe of their life. Then... Than it's the same than today. At a certain point we can't live alone anymore. And that's why we have structure to help the elders, having them in a city or spread does just means having littler structures in nature instead of isolated concrete buildings where we can't almost see anything nice around...
However you are right stating that NOT EVERYBODY can afford certain homes, cars etc, and that's a problem I do not see solved by anyone. Those who claim goshiwong alike homes solve that tend to be some who want young and productive slaves, not anything else...
> I'm not talking in CO₂ terms but in pollution terms.
The topic was "If we all cycled like the Dutch, global emissions would drop 700M tonnes".
Some forms of pollution are more critical than others.
> it's economically sound develop as much as possible such local resources and so the fraction of long-haul food logistics we need it far reduced
We had such an economy. Turns out canal and then rail are far more efficient at moving goods than roads. So much so that canal and then rail hubs became important towns and cities.
Cheap fossil fuels then made road transport more economical, allowing suburban and exurban sprawl, like what you enjoy.
> I buy large ones and freeze all I can freeze
You know that people who live in the city can do that too, right? We keep bulk foods in our basement storage, where it's dark and cool.
In the US, Latter Day Saints ("Mormons") believe they should have a three months to a year of food in storage, and many Mormons live in Salt Lake City.
> do you think tall buildings in cities are eternal
"Tall buildings" is a common misdirection by people who don't like cities. "Tall" can be 5 stories, like the one I live in, or it can be 100 stories, like a skyscraper.
No buildings are eternal, including rural ones. Tearing down and building a new 5 story building with 20 apartments is not hard. Likely cheaper than tearing down and re-building 20 free-standing houses. Have you computed the costs?
And a lot of people live in urban areas in detached houses, and "with a mix of residential and commercial small buildings with enough space around for nature."
> ZERO economy of scale ANYWHERE
I can't see how anyone with a basic sense of production history can make that claim.
Even on a physical level, big cargo ships are much cheaper per ton-mile than smaller ones. That's why we have 20,000 TEU+ container ships.
Your argument seems to be that every example from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale is bunk, and every economist from Adam Smith on up is wrong.
This is a very surprising conclusion, which requires very strong evidence. So far you've only presented your gut feelings.
> We do not have real innovation anymore
You aren't the first to say that. Over 2000 years ago someone wrote:
"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.", Ecclesiastes 1:9