Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6 kilometres each per day. If this pattern was replicated worldwide, the study suggests, annual global carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.
This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia.
I’m from the Netherlands and use a bicycle for most of my daily commute. What isn’t mentioned in the article: cycling is also dirt cheap. I bought a new bicycle 8 years ago for 500 euro, needed two times a repair of around 100 euro in total. That’s like 3 months of owning a cheap car
But are they good bikes though? I’ve been to Amsterdam twice, once in the 80’s and again a couple of years ago. I love the bicycle culture but the bikes themselves, not so much. I saw a few decent ones but they were few and far between the heavy looking cruisers most were riding. I was a transportational cyclist in California for a few decades and my last bike was $1100 new in 1987. Would be a few thousand today and I can’t picture riding anything lesser. My standard commute was a little over 11 Miles, so 18 km…
my favourite bikes to ride are my shittiest ones (that I keep in good condition)
they’re not actually shitty bikes, they’re just 25 years old and I bought them for next to nothing. they’re nothing like my good bikes, and yet they get ridden the most
I think if you’re having trouble enjoying yourself on a well-maintained cheap bike, the problem is with you and not the bike tbh
You don’t NEED a carbon frame multi-thousand dollar bike any more than drivers need Lamborghinis. If that’s what you WANT, that’s fine, and you should buy it. For most people, they want the equivalent of a Honda Civic.
I got 54kms to get to work every day and no place to park that’s safe between.
I would be happy as a Clam to save my morning run and go to my car but it’s not feasible unfortunately.
Maybe stop putting the buck on people trying to make a living and give it to politicians who fly privately or massive shipping companies.
Nobody’s asking you to cycle for 110 km per day, and the Dutch don’t fo that either. It’s about building cities that are bicycle-friendly, and where people can live in reasonable proximity to their job and all services.
If you’re in the US or Canada the problem is likely zoning and suburbia.
So given the cities are have now, what can we do? Can’t simply build a new one or tear the old one down.
That would be viable if we became nocturnal. Existing outside makes me sweat let alone biking.
So sweat? Its healthier for you
Right. A heat stroke is so healthy. Y’all are so unserious.
So its your issue sweating or heatstroke…
I’m all for more biking. I will remind everyone that the Netherlands is almost completely, absolutely, flat. probably the most conducive place for biking in the entire world
I think this is the biggest thing. Everyone’s complaining about weather like you cant just dress for it.
The biggest thing is that the biggest hills you’ll get in the netherlands are when youre going over a bridge over the canals. Otherwise the whole place is below sea level.
Still though, we can definitely make it easier and better for bikes around the world.
But you forget: the wind is against you both ways!
Only partly a joke. I have a job in N Holland once, way up, and my commute was directly North-South. The prevailing winds come from the West, BUT usually the started off SW, against me, then over the course of the day changed to NW, again against me!
Hate that job anyway.
Mate I’ve lived and bikes in the netherlands and there was one night where I was pushing as hard as I could and barely going forward Finally got to where I was going, went back the other way, and somehow the same fucking thing plus sheets of rain. I was so annoyed
I think this is irrelevant now that bicycles with electric motors are so common.
Still fairly expensive to get though.
Compared to normal bicycles yes (2x the price).
Or - we could just say it’s illegal for these billionaire crybaby warcrime shitheads to fly like they do. Same emissions savings, and the world gets infinitely better.
redesigning cities to be more bikeable (and less car centric) would have an infinitely better effect on your quality of life than stopping billionaires from using private jets tbh
not that we shouldn’t do both, obviously. we should prevent billionaires from existing in the first place even
Cycling like the Dutch would cut the world carbon footprint by far less than replacing our entire power supply with renewables like the Dutch.
Meh. The Netherlands is doing better than we were (all new houses have to have solar panels, for example) but we still get a ton of electricity from gas, and even some from coal still. Most cars are still ICE (internal combustion engine), and efforts to reduce flights to Schiphol (are main airport) keep getting scuttled.
Countries with elevation are greener, because they have hydroelectric power (Sweden, Switzerland). France gets a special mention for being mostly nuclear, which is really good for carbon emissions.
Looking at the year by year emissions at this site is informative:
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/NL/all/yearly
Rebuild the whole of society, place affordable houses around work centers and we could.
Cities need to be build around this concept
They were. America bulldozed them. Just do it again
