Bicycling wastes gas ?

I found this interesting and thought I would pass it on. I never considered the fact that what and how I eat had this much of an impact on anything more than my own health and well being. Chalk one up for the Veggiemonster :)

http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/energy.html



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Permalink Reply by Tank-Ridin' Ryan on September 29, 2010 at 7:57am
And what about the fuel consumption for raising and transporting poultry and fish? Where's the data on that?
Permalink Reply by JeffB on September 29, 2010 at 8:01am
Food for thought (no pun intended), but his complaints about being misunderstood are a bit disingenuous when he headlines his article that way. Plus, if I decide to kick up to 200 miles a week or something, I won't be increasing my meat consumption so much as I will my carb consumption
Permalink Reply by Paul Gurns on September 29, 2010 at 8:02am
I would think fish would be considerably lower if they were farm raised. Catching though who knows with big ships using all that diesel fuel.

Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:
And what about the fuel consumption for raising and transporting poultry and fish? Where's the data on that?
Permalink Reply by Kevin Mulcky on September 29, 2010 at 9:32am
Right, his calculations are for beef heavy diets. Otherwise, this article kinda blew my mind.

JeffB said:
Food for thought (no pun intended), but his complaints about being misunderstood are a bit disingenuous when he headlines his article that way. Plus, if I decide to kick up to 200 miles a week or something, I won't be increasing my meat consumption so much as I will my carb consumption
Permalink Reply by Tank-Ridin' Ryan on September 29, 2010 at 10:49am
Funny Serge, real funny.

Serge Lubomudrov said:
Poultry can walk or fly, fish can swim. No transportation costs :)



Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:
And what about the fuel consumption for raising and transporting poultry and fish? Where's the data on that?
Permalink Reply by Tank-Ridin' Ryan on September 29, 2010 at 11:47am
Me? Sarcastic? Never!

Serge Lubomudrov said:
Are you being sarcastique, Ryan? ;)



Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:
Funny Serge, real funny.

Serge Lubomudrov said:
Poultry can walk or fly, fish can swim. No transportation costs :)



Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:
And what about the fuel consumption for raising and transporting poultry and fish? Where's the data on that?
Permalink Reply by Vilda on September 29, 2010 at 12:44pm
What a load of Hooey! This article would pertain to anyone with an active lifestyle. It's just more garbage telling people that meat is bad. I'm off to drown a vegan!
Permalink Reply by Dr. Doom on September 29, 2010 at 1:39pm
I don't eat meat, but the math here is complete and utter bullshit. Here's a George Monbiot review of a recent book that addresses the topic. My favorite bit:

Like many greens I have thoughtlessly repeated the claim that every kilogram of beef requires 100,000 litres of water to produce(3). Fairlie shows that this figure is wrong by around three orders of magnitude. It arose from the absurd assumption that every drop of water that falls on a pasture disappears into the animals that graze it, never to re-emerge.

For comparison's sake, a human being is three orders of magnitude larger than an ant.
Permalink Reply by Steven Lane on September 29, 2010 at 3:39pm
Dr. Doom is a bit selective in his quotes. Even just fixating on the one point that seems to make a relevant observation, you had to stop and smell the bullshit when reading "the animals that graze it". Unless you are getting meat at Whole Foods, you're eating an animal that stood in a pen covered in it's own shit it's whole life, and the poor beast never got a day in the sun grazing in a pasture. It's called factory farming, and it accounts for the vast majority of the meat you eat. We're a long way from Kansas Toto.

The closing paragraph of the Monbiot's article points to the fallacy of Fairlie's argument that meat production is not as bad as we think.

The meat-producing system Simon Fairlie advocates differs sharply from the one now practised in the rich world: low energy, low waste, just, diverse, small-scale. But if we were to adopt it, we could eat meat, milk and eggs (albeit much less) with a clean conscience. By keeping out of the debate over how livestock should be kept, those of us who have advocated veganism have allowed the champions of cruel, destructive, famine-inducing meat farming to prevail. It’s time we got stuck in.

I agree that going with local small-scale food production is the answer. It would be awesome to see the suburbs bulldozed and converted back into small family farms feeding our cities. However, we are so far away from this model that one has to start getting critical about the food we consume. It only took a couple generations to devolve into the mess we're in, so it should only take a couple generations to correct things, right?

~steven
Permalink Reply by Dr. Doom on September 29, 2010 at 4:30pm
The figures in the originally linked piece are ridiculous (thus the link to the review of a book on the topic). Because the argument is based on bad figures, it comes to silly conclusions.

As I said, I don't eat meat myself. However, the impact of meat eating is more than bad enough without making absurd, demonstrably false claims about it.
Permalink Reply by Vilda on September 29, 2010 at 6:38pm
You know what tastes good? Veal. ;-) F'in delicious ;-)
Permalink Reply by Andrea Bolks on September 30, 2010 at 2:10am
That totally depends what kind of fish you were talking about, because carnivorous fish eat A LOT OF OTHER FISH and fish products when being raised. (which is just one of the possible environmental impacts of aquaculture). Those other fish have been caught from the oceans in, almost certainly, very unsustainable ways (our Oceans are in absolutely horrible conditions for those who didn't know) plus you have to account for all the fuel used in catching/transporting/packaging/processing those fish have to be taken into account for.
This article is brilliant, and I think really points at the way people need to consider many factors when thinking as something as simple as fuel consumption. It really points to how complicated sustainability is and how it must be approached holistically.




Paul Gurns said:
I would think fish would be considerably lower if they were farm raised. Catching though who knows with big ships using all that diesel fuel.

Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:
And what about the fuel consumption for raising and transporting poultry and fish? Where's the data on that?

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