bicycle is better than fuel-dependent machine
New Canaan Advertiser Thursday, July 26, 2007 Page 5A
Eco-man
Bio-fuel won't cure addiction to the machine
By Richard Stowe
Its not oil Americans are addicted to - we may be experiencing the inflationary effects of diverting grain harvest from food to bio-fuel.
Directing an increasingly larger share of corn production to make bio-fuel at ethanol distilleries may have led to a doubling of corn prices in the past year.
The outlook for converting palm oil, which as a bio-fuel is four to six times more efficient than corn, to bio-diesel is even worse.
Indonesia may set aside forty percent of its future palm oil production for bio-fuel. That’s a plan a healthy planet cannot afford.
The scale of today’s oil of palm industrial monoculture (eighty-four percent of palm oil is harvested in Indonesia or Malaysia) has created significant and unavoidable adverse environmental impacts.
In Indonesia oil palm acreage has increased thirty-fold since the 1960’s (that growth primarily was driven by the use of palm oil for food and cosmetic purposes) and in Malaysia oil palm monoculture accounted for eighty-seven percent of the deforestation between 1985 and 2000.
Tropical forest loss in Indonesia and Malaysia is eliminating critical habitat for Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae – one of five tiger subspecies remaining), two orangutan (Malay word for man of the jungle) species - the Bornean (Pongo pymacus) and Sumutran (Pongo abelii), Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) and Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumertrensis).
What we’re really addicted to is the automobile. Once an Americans steps outdoors, he or she invariably steps into a car or truck (150 million Americans had 49 million motor vehicles in 1950; 300 million Americans had 237.7 million in 2003).
Record levels of motor vehicle ownership in the United States (771 vehicles per thousand people in 2000) and record air travel (witness the FAA’s plan to accommodate more flights in the New York metropolitan area) have created an insatiable appetite for liquid fuel – whether its petroleum or ethanol; the average American household consumed 1067 gallons of gasoline for vehicle travel in 1994. That’s the conundrum we face – our economy, our lifestyle seems to depend on cars, trucks and planes - significant contributors to climate change, pollution (motor vehicles are responsible for 55 percent of cancer contaminants in America) and biodiversity collapse.
Recently while shopping for organic, local produce at the Westport Farmer’s Market I saw a solution - when Westport resident, Shawn Liprie, - a single mom with three children, rolled up with a BOB trailer (http://www.bobtrailers.com/) – which carries up to 50 pounds - attached to her bicycle.
Shawn is fit – she plays quarterback in the women’s professional football league and plays golf, tennis and kayaks. Ms. Liprie who gardens, even cuts her lawn with a push mower. And she is a proud mom who put me on notice that a front-page photo of her daughter, Amber Coutermash, at the 2007 Staples High School graduation ceremony, had just appeared in a Westport newspaper.
The trailer, she explained, enables her to shop at Super Stop & Shop, Stew Leonard’s and Wild Oats or carry out multiple errands by bicycle. That day, aside from going to the Farmer’s Market, she would bike to Fed Ex, the bank, Longshore Country Club to sign up for tee times and to a football game. Shawn even hopes to find or design a trailer to carry her kayak down to Long Island Sound by bicycle.
At Shawn’s home her car mostly sits in the driveway. That’s quite a feat in Westport, the heart of the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk-Danbury CT sprawlopolis, which ranked number seven in a list of the ten worst cases of urban sprawl in a 2002 report released by Smart Growth America, Rutgers University and Cornell University.
Other options for hauling goods while bicycling exist. One is the gonzo-California designed, but built in Taiwan Xtracycle (http://www.xtracycle.com) “Sport Utility Bicycle”, which extends your conventional bicycle frame by 15 inches. Frame extender, racks and panniers add only nine pounds to an existing bicycle, but enables cyclists to carry up to an extra 150 pounds and that 150 pounds can include a passenger. Another is a made-in-Iowa Bikes at Work (http://www.bikesatwork.com) trailer available in three lengths, weighing between 27 and 43 pounds, which carry bulky items, such as refrigerators, up to 300 pounds.
Two organizations, each with different constituencies, currently advocate for cycling as transportation in their respective locales in Connecticut. Both hold bicycle to work events on the last Friday of the month. Hartford based-Central Connecticut Bicycle Alliance (http://www.wecyclect.org/) has advocated for bicycle racks on buses and is reviving the Discover Hartford Bicycling and Walking Tour on September 8, 2007.
New Haven-based Elm City Cycling (http://www.elmcitycycling.org/) has advocated for bicycles-on-trains on Metro-North. ECC disseminates information about New Haven’s monthly critical mass and this summer is the national host of Bike Summer. On June 23rd I rode one hundred miles in the crown jewel event of Bike Summer– the New Haven Century. I can attest to the back roads beauty of Woodbridge and the crystal clear coastal views in Madison, Guilford or Branford. On Thursday, July 26th at 5:30 p.m. ECC hosts a Bike Summer Art Reception at Fuel (516 Chapel Street New Haven.)
Fairfield County would certainly benefit from a cycling as transportation advocacy group to support cyclists, such as Shawn.
Fifty-four percent of Americans live less than five miles from work. Many errands and activities are within that distance, too. At five miles or less car engines are cold. Cold engines are fuel thirsty and release considerably more pollutants on a per mile basis than warm engines.
In terms of energy efficiency, bicycling is the clear winner over competing modes. The calories required for a ten-mile roundtrip by car is 18,600 (1/2 gallon of gasoline); by bicycle it is 350; bus 9200; train 8850 and walking1000.
In terms of water consumption, or space requirements, bicycling is even more efficient; forty gallons of water are used to refine each gallon of gasoline a car burns and twelve bicycles fit in the space required by one car in the parking lot, or street.
Yes, Shawn is a role model for moms wondering how to save the earth from global warming (and burn off extra calories) - one mom at a time.
Eco-man
Bio-fuel won't cure addiction to the machine
By Richard Stowe
Its not oil Americans are addicted to - we may be experiencing the inflationary effects of diverting grain harvest from food to bio-fuel.
Directing an increasingly larger share of corn production to make bio-fuel at ethanol distilleries may have led to a doubling of corn prices in the past year.
The outlook for converting palm oil, which as a bio-fuel is four to six times more efficient than corn, to bio-diesel is even worse.
Indonesia may set aside forty percent of its future palm oil production for bio-fuel. That’s a plan a healthy planet cannot afford.
The scale of today’s oil of palm industrial monoculture (eighty-four percent of palm oil is harvested in Indonesia or Malaysia) has created significant and unavoidable adverse environmental impacts.
In Indonesia oil palm acreage has increased thirty-fold since the 1960’s (that growth primarily was driven by the use of palm oil for food and cosmetic purposes) and in Malaysia oil palm monoculture accounted for eighty-seven percent of the deforestation between 1985 and 2000.
Tropical forest loss in Indonesia and Malaysia is eliminating critical habitat for Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae – one of five tiger subspecies remaining), two orangutan (Malay word for man of the jungle) species - the Bornean (Pongo pymacus) and Sumutran (Pongo abelii), Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) and Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumertrensis).
What we’re really addicted to is the automobile. Once an Americans steps outdoors, he or she invariably steps into a car or truck (150 million Americans had 49 million motor vehicles in 1950; 300 million Americans had 237.7 million in 2003).
Record levels of motor vehicle ownership in the United States (771 vehicles per thousand people in 2000) and record air travel (witness the FAA’s plan to accommodate more flights in the New York metropolitan area) have created an insatiable appetite for liquid fuel – whether its petroleum or ethanol; the average American household consumed 1067 gallons of gasoline for vehicle travel in 1994. That’s the conundrum we face – our economy, our lifestyle seems to depend on cars, trucks and planes - significant contributors to climate change, pollution (motor vehicles are responsible for 55 percent of cancer contaminants in America) and biodiversity collapse.
Recently while shopping for organic, local produce at the Westport Farmer’s Market I saw a solution - when Westport resident, Shawn Liprie, - a single mom with three children, rolled up with a BOB trailer (http://www.bobtrailers.com/) – which carries up to 50 pounds - attached to her bicycle.
Shawn is fit – she plays quarterback in the women’s professional football league and plays golf, tennis and kayaks. Ms. Liprie who gardens, even cuts her lawn with a push mower. And she is a proud mom who put me on notice that a front-page photo of her daughter, Amber Coutermash, at the 2007 Staples High School graduation ceremony, had just appeared in a Westport newspaper.
The trailer, she explained, enables her to shop at Super Stop & Shop, Stew Leonard’s and Wild Oats or carry out multiple errands by bicycle. That day, aside from going to the Farmer’s Market, she would bike to Fed Ex, the bank, Longshore Country Club to sign up for tee times and to a football game. Shawn even hopes to find or design a trailer to carry her kayak down to Long Island Sound by bicycle.
At Shawn’s home her car mostly sits in the driveway. That’s quite a feat in Westport, the heart of the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk-Danbury CT sprawlopolis, which ranked number seven in a list of the ten worst cases of urban sprawl in a 2002 report released by Smart Growth America, Rutgers University and Cornell University.
Other options for hauling goods while bicycling exist. One is the gonzo-California designed, but built in Taiwan Xtracycle (http://www.xtracycle.com) “Sport Utility Bicycle”, which extends your conventional bicycle frame by 15 inches. Frame extender, racks and panniers add only nine pounds to an existing bicycle, but enables cyclists to carry up to an extra 150 pounds and that 150 pounds can include a passenger. Another is a made-in-Iowa Bikes at Work (http://www.bikesatwork.com) trailer available in three lengths, weighing between 27 and 43 pounds, which carry bulky items, such as refrigerators, up to 300 pounds.
Two organizations, each with different constituencies, currently advocate for cycling as transportation in their respective locales in Connecticut. Both hold bicycle to work events on the last Friday of the month. Hartford based-Central Connecticut Bicycle Alliance (http://www.wecyclect.org/) has advocated for bicycle racks on buses and is reviving the Discover Hartford Bicycling and Walking Tour on September 8, 2007.
New Haven-based Elm City Cycling (http://www.elmcitycycling.org/) has advocated for bicycles-on-trains on Metro-North. ECC disseminates information about New Haven’s monthly critical mass and this summer is the national host of Bike Summer. On June 23rd I rode one hundred miles in the crown jewel event of Bike Summer– the New Haven Century. I can attest to the back roads beauty of Woodbridge and the crystal clear coastal views in Madison, Guilford or Branford. On Thursday, July 26th at 5:30 p.m. ECC hosts a Bike Summer Art Reception at Fuel (516 Chapel Street New Haven.)
Fairfield County would certainly benefit from a cycling as transportation advocacy group to support cyclists, such as Shawn.
Fifty-four percent of Americans live less than five miles from work. Many errands and activities are within that distance, too. At five miles or less car engines are cold. Cold engines are fuel thirsty and release considerably more pollutants on a per mile basis than warm engines.
In terms of energy efficiency, bicycling is the clear winner over competing modes. The calories required for a ten-mile roundtrip by car is 18,600 (1/2 gallon of gasoline); by bicycle it is 350; bus 9200; train 8850 and walking1000.
In terms of water consumption, or space requirements, bicycling is even more efficient; forty gallons of water are used to refine each gallon of gasoline a car burns and twelve bicycles fit in the space required by one car in the parking lot, or street.
Yes, Shawn is a role model for moms wondering how to save the earth from global warming (and burn off extra calories) - one mom at a time.
posted by Richard Stowe at 8:56 AM
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