just pave the earth now, ok?

[jason]

Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.

Ecogeek has an article that says walking is less energy efficient than driving… which cracks me up. There is a notion of total cost accounting that looks for the hidden costs in an activity. This silly article Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’ from the London Times takes the simple sensationalist approach that if you take the most energy inefficient way humans get energy, beef, vs the most reductionist energy use in cars, gasoline…

“Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

See what I mean? Read the rest of it. Of course it is all ‘true’. And it reminds me that it is not important what answers you find, but rather what questions you ask.