This is curious. Greenpeace is giving away free pedometers at COP16 in Cancun. Watch the video below. I don’t really understand the point of all this, except maybe its some sort of guilt over the limousine largess from COP15 in Copenhagen, and they want people to walk to their hotels? Even so, they apparently are unaware of this Times Online article which points out, walking apparently produces more CO2 than driving:
Walking to the shops ‘damages planet more than going by car’
Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.
Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.
…
{Goodhall says] “The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”
Well, that’s inconvenient. Greenpeace says the opposite. They write on the Greenpeace More Walk Less Talk page:
COP 16 will be the seventh Conference of the Parties since the Kyoto Protocol entered into force in February 2005. That’s a lot of talking.
The physical layout of these meetings means there is a great deal of walking. Walking, as we all know is very good for you – it’s credited with helping breathing, improving circulation, bolstering the immune system, and helps people stay in shape.
It is also, of course, good for the climate. But, as international climate negotiations processes show, sadly so far – not enough governments are “Walking the Talk.”
So, in Cancun – Greenpeace is hosting “More Walk, Less Talk” – a competition to find the person and the country that covers the most ground in Cancun.
Yes, the race to the future starts here. Grab your step-counter and go!
Well I’ve got no beef with the “walking improves health” message. I wonder what the winning prize is? Watch the promotional video:
And the battle continues over the issue of walking versus driving, the Pacific Institute wrote a rebuttal to the walking is worse versus driving story.
As noted by Goodall, what really stands out in this comparison is the astoundingly high GHG values for walking when the calories come from beef or dairy. The idea that moving a 2,853 pound Nissan Sentra42 plus a 189-pound driver could possibly generate fewer GHGs than if that driver simply walked the same distance underscores the staggering carbon intensity of beef and dairy production. To be fair to Goodall, this was in fact his underlying message: meat-intensive diets are energy intensive and greenhouse gas intensive.
So obviously, the message missing from the Greenpeace Pedometer message at COP16 is “walk but don’t eat meat or dairy”.
So much for those fancy Cancun dinners on whomever is funding the attendee. Bean burrito for you!
Of course the whole “walking to save the planet” idea gets negated by the simple fact that none of these people arrived by sailboat in Cancun, but used some fossil fuel gussling airplane and then maybe a train or taxi.
But at least they’ll feel better about themselves walking around hungry, right?
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This reminds me of a local TV station in the Twin Cities that for a couple of years boasted about its “people powered” broadcasts from the annual State Fair. They had an elaborate array of stationary cycles linked to batteries so that Fair visitors could hop on, pedal for a bit and create a picture of utopian green harmony. I did the math and assumed the riders used simple carbohydrate as fuel (not meat based) and showed that more GHG was released by cycling than by running a diesel generator. It was harder to estimate the comparison with coal fired plants making electricity for the grid. The price per Kwh was much higher for the people powered electricity than either a diesel generator or the standard charge from the regional energy company. I sent my results to the TV producer and got a (predictably) tepid response. Interestingly, the station this year did not have the people power exhibit at the State Fair. I’m sure it was very expensive and the government was not subsidizing it the way it does for solar and wind power in the country at large.