Walking to the store bad for the environment? (fixed link)

[imported_Shivetya]

The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. ?Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles 4.8km adds about 0.9 kg 2lb of CO2 to the atmosphere,? he said, a calculation based on the Government?s official fuel emission figures. ?If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You?d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.


for those of us in Western economies the idea of NOT having stores everywhere filled with food is an alien concept; I know, friends from Czech and Poland were amazed... even dismayed at the prosperity we have. Hell even some friends out of France were stunned by the sheer number of grocery stores here in my little slice of Atlanta...

Still, how much is this world market "damaging the environment"? Is it really or are these numbers based on too many assumptions?

 

[SirStev0]

bad link?

 

[TipsyMcStagger]

I think most people are going to eat the beef or drink the milk regardless of whether they walk or drive :/

 

[mfs378]

Beef is pretty inefficient, if you compare the calories we get from the meat compared to the calories consumed by the cattle. So the numbers would be quite different if you were to use a bowl of cereal or something like that. Also, if you included the CO2 produced during the drilling/refining/transportation of fuel the numbers would be different. It is interesting though.

 

[DaveSimmons]

That article also claims plastic bags are better than paper, ignoring the fact that, unlike oil, paper does grow on trees.

From a quick read it looked like the guy secretly working from exxon considered only carbon emissions and nothing else.

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: Shivetya
for those of us in Western economies the idea of NOT having stores everywhere filled with food is an alien concept; I know, friends from Czech and Poland were amazed... even dismayed at the prosperity we have. Hell even some friends out of France were stunned by the sheer number of grocery stores here in my little slice of Atlanta...

France? France is like the 6th or 7th richest country in the world and they are obsessed with food - I swear there are more food and wine shops in some parts of France than there are people, and there are probably more *quality* food and wine shops in France than there are on the whole American continent.

The Poles are pretty poor but they aren't all that bad off, they're EU now, and they have like 7% economic growth.

 

[StageLeft]

Originally posted by: Atheus

Originally posted by: Shivetya
for those of us in Western economies the idea of NOT having stores everywhere filled with food is an alien concept; I know, friends from Czech and Poland were amazed... even dismayed at the prosperity we have. Hell even some friends out of France were stunned by the sheer number of grocery stores here in my little slice of Atlanta...

France? France is like the 6th or 7th richest country in the world and they are obsessed with food - I swear there are more food and wine shops in some parts of France than there are people, and there are probably more *quality* food and wine shops in France than there are on the whole American continent.

The Poles are pretty poor but they aren't all that bad off, they're EU now, and they have like 7% economic growth.

They're more likely to buy food from smaller, more numerous stores though instead of the more efficient but soulless supermarket.

---

Anyway who TF eats that much beef? Carbs and fat are much cheaper than beef as sources of energy.

 

[homercles337]

Wow, talk about CLUELESS for food consumerism. Shityva may have outdone himself. If thats actually possible.

 

[Balt]

I very much doubt the majority of most people's calories come from beef.

 

[imported_Shivetya]

Originally posted by: homercles337
Wow, talk about CLUELESS for food consumerism. Shityva may have outdone himself. If thats actually possible.

Who is clueless?

I am posting an article I found that I thought was purely BS. I was hoping someone could point to places where the numbers are based on or refuted.

 

[fskimospy]

The largest problems with that are the following:

As mentioned above, beef is spectacularly inefficient from an energy to calorie standpoint. Good thing that very few people get all or even most of their calories from beef. (and those that do will be dead soon anyway) If you substituted some carbohydrates in beef's place in that equasion... suddenly everything changes. (shocking) In some ways he was trying to make the point to eat more grains, but when you wildly mislead people from the get-go... bad news.

Secondly, they don't take into account any of the collateral costs. If your average Johnny Jackass were to walk a bit each day instead of squeezing his gigantic ass into his SUV for a 3 mile drive, you would have far fewer overweight people in this world and thus would have far lower medical costs... thus leading to far less energy and wealth consumed by needless healthcare... and so on and so forth. All that extra money could make a good dent in some greenhouse emissions.

In addition, the infrastructure needs created by large numbers of vehicles on the roads are not counted into the equasion. There is a huge amount of money spent on larger, better roads because of that simple fact that if we need to borrow a cup of sugar from the neighbor we are just as likely to drive our SUV over the hedges separating our two lawns as we are to take the time to walk down and up a driveway or two. Such things would not be as necessary if we walked more.

In short: The guy is trying to be 3dgy by turning conventional wisdom on its head (as mentioned in the article). He does so by imagining an unrealistic scenario and then removing it from all context and connection with the rest of society. I guess it worked though, he's in the paper.

 

[ebaycj]

Originally posted by: Balt
I very much doubt the majority of most people's calories come from beef.

Do you live in america ?

 

[Lemon law]

The defect in the study is the fact that regardless if the person is walking or driving, they are still emitting almost the same amount of CO2. So to reduce the CO2 emissions, the answer is to reduce the human population. But thats defective reasoning, because then other non-human parts of the environment would increase their CO2 as more beef cattle consume calories and emit CO2.

And you are left with the truth. Namely fossil fuels, be it oil or coal, lock up carbon. And when we burn that locked up carbon, we get more CO2 in the overall system. And plants take in CO2 and lock up the carbon animal life eats and then later emits as CO2. But any CO2 locked up in fossil fuels stays locked up until we human fools burn it and add that back to the overall existing balance.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
The defect in the study is the fact that regardless if the person is walking or driving, they are still emitting almost the same amount of CO2. So to reduce the CO2 emissions, the answer is to reduce the human population. But thats defective reasoning, because then other non-human parts of the environment would increase their CO2 as more beef cattle consume calories and emit CO2.

And you are left with the truth. Namely fossil fuels, be it oil or coal, lock up carbon. And when we burn that locked up carbon, we get more CO2 in the overall system. And plants take in CO2 and lock up the carbon animal life eats and then later emits as CO2. But any CO2 locked up in fossil fuels stays locked up until we human fools burn it and add that back to the overall existing balance.

It would work if you ate humans.

 

[StageLeft]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Lemon law
The defect in the study is the fact that regardless if the person is walking or driving, they are still emitting almost the same amount of CO2. So to reduce the CO2 emissions, the answer is to reduce the human population. But thats defective reasoning, because then other non-human parts of the environment would increase their CO2 as more beef cattle consume calories and emit CO2.

And you are left with the truth. Namely fossil fuels, be it oil or coal, lock up carbon. And when we burn that locked up carbon, we get more CO2 in the overall system. And plants take in CO2 and lock up the carbon animal life eats and then later emits as CO2. But any CO2 locked up in fossil fuels stays locked up until we human fools burn it and add that back to the overall existing balance.

It would work if you ate humans.

Very hard to cook, the texture such that to sufficiently cook the inside of most typical cuts, the exterior runs a real risk of being over done.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Skoorb

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Lemon law
The defect in the study is the fact that regardless if the person is walking or driving, they are still emitting almost the same amount of CO2. So to reduce the CO2 emissions, the answer is to reduce the human population. But thats defective reasoning, because then other non-human parts of the environment would increase their CO2 as more beef cattle consume calories and emit CO2.

And you are left with the truth. Namely fossil fuels, be it oil or coal, lock up carbon. And when we burn that locked up carbon, we get more CO2 in the overall system. And plants take in CO2 and lock up the carbon animal life eats and then later emits as CO2. But any CO2 locked up in fossil fuels stays locked up until we human fools burn it and add that back to the overall existing balance.

It would work if you ate humans.

Very hard to cook, the texture such that to sufficiently cook the inside of most typical cuts, the exterior runs a real risk of being over done.

Soylent Green, Soylent Blue, Soylent Orange And we can start with Mr. Goodall there, he seems to just be a great, big, gas bag.

 

[piasabird]

Pink in the center