Originally Posted by
mihlbach
Riding a bike doesn't save gas. At best, increased bike ridership may reduce demand for fuel, which means somebody else (probably in India or China) can afford to drive or drive more. Unless you can convince the rest of the world to abandon the car, its a hopeless endeavor. I'm not under the illusion that I'm saving the earth, since someone else is going to burn the fuel that I don't burn.
This is fallacious. The amount of gas you do not burn does very little to affect others' affordability of driving and therefore increased consumption by someone else. Joe Schmo is unlikely to do increased driving simply because you are biking, even when a (slight) decrease in gas price is considered. Witness to this is that people's driving habits change relatively little until you see a
major spike in gas prices. People will drive what they need (or feel they need) to drive for. My biking won't affect that except very indirectly and slightly.
Someone else will burn what I save. "Green" is a marketing scam. The kind of people fooled by "green" marketing are the same who think they are saving the earth by driving hybrids around and using recycleable shopping bags.
Don't get me wrong - I know much of the green movement is simply marketing (witness the hybrids with more footprint than an SUV). But not all of it is. Re-usable bags, for example, reduce garbage sent to the landfills, and has zero effect on someone else's usage. Basically, the attitude that "Someone will burn what I save" is fatalistic and akin to "My one vote won't count for anything".