Save The World, Stop Exercising!

A number of organizations have gone out of their way to apportion an unfair percentage of CO₂ pollution to automotive transport. There is another side to the story, as shown by the recent research conducted by Prof. Alberto E Minetti, of the physiology department at the University of Milan, and published in the journal Scientific American.  He and his doctoral student Gaspare Pavei compared the CO₂ emissions from four men walking, running and biking with the emissions from a petrol-engined, a diesel-engined and a hybrid car.

They found the following:

 

SITUATION	CO2 in g/km
Four men walking	50
Four men running	100
Four men biking	25
Petrol-engined car	121
Diesel-engined car	110
Hybrid	93

 

The above table also illustrates that the CO₂ exhaled by humans depends very much on how active they are. The exhaled values depend on the body mass, so that children and females would show lower values of pollution under the same conditions. These figures also show just how efficient a bicycle is as a means of transport.

For myself, the conclusion is obvious: Don’t run, and only walk if your bicycle has a puncture.

Tags: emissions