Originally Posted by cooker
Firstly, you made no effort to evaluate the externalized energy costs of driving versus cycling. It takes an awful lot of diesel to build and maintain a 14 lane freeway, like Highway 401 near my home in Toronto, or a multilevel underground parkade like the one at my office.. Every time I bike to work that's one fewer cars competing for that space and increasing the demand for more of the same.
cooker,
But just think about all the people who were employed to build the roads, the parking garages, the automobiles, the road building equipment, the asphalt, the cement, the traffic lights, and then think about the police officers to patrol, the highway workers to maintain, and ....! It took hundreds of thousands if not millions of gainfully employed people to produce these things. Do you want those people to have nothing or nearly nothing and to live in poverty with nothing gainful to do?
Because of their efforts to improve and expand the infrastructures of our nations, the ultimate impact (whether we count it as a negative or a positive) is that as a world we have accelerated the continued advance of technology. For instance, my wife works for a very large computer and services related company. They have a world wide presence. They gainfully employ well over 1/2 million people world wide. Because of advancement in technology, 65% of the employees work from their homes. This has an impact on energy consumption.
The expenditure of that energy you mention to build the roads has gone for a very good thing, the advancement of technology. It has many benefits and not just in our immediate back yards. Not only does it allow us to freely debate this issue unfettered across international borders, it allows the men and women who sit in call centers in India, be gainfully employed as they help us make our airline reservations, among other things. Those call center employees in India are thankful for the energy expenditures we have made in North America.
Ride your bike to work and enjoy yourself. But as you pedal, reflect upon the economic impact Canada would experience if suddenly all the technology and infrastructure that you see as you pass along the way to work, were removed. Who knows? You might not even have a bicycle if we lost it all.