Responses to criticisms of 'walking versus driving'

Responses to criticisms of 'walking versus driving'

 The article published by the London Times has generated a substantial amount of criticism and comment.  In my opinion, Dominic Kennedy's article was a good assessment of the main points I tried to raise in the piece published on this web site.

I summarise what I understand the main criticisms to be below.

a) I did not include the impact of the energy cost of making and maintaining the car.

This is correct. If I had included this figure, the GHG emissions from driving a car would have been about 15% higher. By an order of magnitude this would not have altered the conclusion.

b) I did not include the impact of 'cold starts' on energy consumption of vehicles.

This is correct. If I had included this figure, the GHG emissions from driving a car might have been about 20% higher. By an order of magnitude this would not have altered the conclusion.

c) I am encouraging driving.

This is not my argument. I wanted to draw attention to the impact of intensive agriculture, particularly of beef and other ruminants, on GHG emissions. Cutting emissions from the food supply chain is an urgent task. The unfortunate fact is that intensive farming of ruminant animals means that many foods have extremely high carbon footprints.

d) Calculations such as the one I made, comparing energy use while walking compared to driving, confuse people and make the global warming challenge harder to address.

I am sorry that people conclude this. I see the strength of their argument. However, if we are to tackle the urgent task of reducing global emissions, we cannot ignore the increasingly important impact of beef farming. We do not do future generations any service by choosing not to mention Western diets and their effect on greenhouse gas emissions.

 e) The right wing blogsphere has used the Times article to buttress its opposition to actions to check global warming and to pour scorn on environmentalism.

There is nothing anybody can do about this. These benighted people will go to their graves thinking that global warming is some great liberal conspiracy.