this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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[–] Bnuttn@sopuli.xyz 6 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Hard to use bikes a lot here in Finland. If you live in one of big cities then yes maybe but even then the winters are long, snowy and cold.

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[–] deelayman@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 years ago

I asked a couple with a 3 year old daughter how they get around without a car, and they said they cycle by default and use a car-share service occasionally for longer journeys. The amount they save on insurance alone pays for the car-shares and short term car rentals to get out of the city for a few days.

Suburbs and rural areas can benefit from electric bikes to an extent. And a more deliberate focus on building transit oriented communities should help quite a bit.

[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago (4 children)

You can ride a bike to work or the store around here, but you'll be walking home. Bikes are way too easy to quietly steal.

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[–] dollop_of_cream@beehaw.org 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

There is a very impressive set of reasons why we could and should encourage less CO2 intensive forms of transport, indeed many actions. However, these arguments always seem to me to take the pattern of picking the extreme example of whatever good we are hoping to achieve and then implying that everyone else could easily make the switch. There is always a wide and natural variety in things and this is true for differences between nations too. Extreme examples used like this often just end up making a bigger divide between people because the discussion misses all of the important differences that constrain choices and shape outcomes. We just end up talking from our own perspectives and experiences rather than exploring the complicated and difficult questions of how we can produce localised and regional responses to CO2 emissions drawn from fossil fuels.

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[–] aMalayali@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

It probably would be helpful, but it wouldn't be that useful in the tropical regions, where you have monsoons with strong rain/wind and hot summers.
Physical exertion in the sun is not always fun.

Tho, It'd be fun when the destination is near and the weather is decent.

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[–] Emirose@beehaw.org 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

As someone who once HAD to commute for a 45 minute car ride to work... not all commutes work with this. Public transit can help with a lot of those, but unless we rezone and rebuild most cites for shorter commutes, it won't replace all cars.

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[–] Spacebar@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

Transportation and electric power are 38% and 33% of co2 emissions in the US respectively.

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/images/full-reports/2022/58566-fig1_emissions-sector.png

Passenger vehicles are 58% of co2 emissions of all transportation in the US.

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/images/full-reports/2022/58566-fig4_emissions-type.png

Electricity generation breaks down as: Petroleum (crude oil and natural gas plant liquids): 28% Coal: 17.8% Renewable energy: 12.7% Nuclear electric power: 9.6% .

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3#:~:text=About%2060%25%20of%20this%20electricity,%2C%20petroleum%2C%20and%20other%20gases.

[–] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

I like this idea in principle, but the annual CO2 emissions for 2018 was about 35 billion tons. This makes the drop barely even impact our total production, let alone be enough to stop global warming.

It's still a worthy goal, but we'd be better off focusing on bigger wins, where even a few percent of carbon reductions would dwarf this number.

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