Originally Posted by stokell
I was under the impression this is what everyone does, but perhaps not.
I see bike riding as being
green, that is doing something to save the resources of the planet. When I tour I choose to travel to my tour start/end point either by bike or public transport (including airplanes for inter-continental travel).
When I tour I choose to travel in a way that I cause the least damage to our planet. I stealth camp and follow Leave No Trace principles.
I’ve named my bike. It is called the Kyoto Accord.
On another thread on this forum I was accused of ‘hijacking’ the thread because of voicing these principles that I genuinely thought were universally held.
So, you tell me: Why do you use a bike to tour instead of an SUV? Do you believe that extensive automobile use is consistant with your eco comfort level?
As a pre-emptive strike I would ask those forum members who think jet travel to be against these ideals, keep in mind I travel on public transport, not my private jet. This is called “offsetting” and according to Sustrans
http://www.sustrans.org.uk/supporters/7.htm
“An offset is intended to be a counterbalance, in this instance to our own carbon dioxide emissions. The idea is that by calculating the CO2 produced as part of our own lifestyle we pay for the same amount of CO2 to be reduced somewhere else, thus neutralising our impact on the environment.”
Actually, Stokell, you have a point on the Airlines. If you compare fuel burn / occupants ratio, an airliner at capacity is burning proportionally, 1/20th the fuel of an SUV!
Re; Kyoto: Here is where we disagree, as new technology will offset emission just like it did with earlier pollutant scrubbing. Rather than reducing production, for example, DuPont actually made money recovering and recycling chemicals through scrubbing plant stack output. I genuinely believe that rather than cripple ourselves economically, start looking for new ideas and technologies to recover the greenhouse gases and actually make it econimically feasible. One example might be methanogen digesters on an industrial scale to produce biogas. This would kill a couple of birds with one stone. Offset of natural gas use, production of fertilizers from biomass, production of building materials (Like Osaka, Japan from their sewage and biomass digester) through incinerating, forming and firing the slurry left over in a kiln to make ceramic bricks. Technology might not solve all of our problems, but it certainly has a better chance than stepping down to third world status!