It was a shower thought for me this morning, after having seen all these record temperatures being broken around the world.
But, if it gets too hot to cycle, then people won’t. And if they aren’t cycling, they may start driving again, which compounds climate change even further.
Does this worry anyone else?
This argument is like asking people to donate cups of water to fight a raging forest fire … if we could only gather thousands of cups of water, maybe we can stop that fire. Meanwhile, there is a maniac standing at the edge of the forest with a flame thrower burning everything and no one wants to acknowledge them.
Government should do things at the regional, national and international levels to curb the activities of major corporations and companies that produce a large majority of the pollution in our world. The world and planet will be fine with all the damage and destruction we are doing to it … it’s survived far worse than anything we can do. We have to do something in order to save ourselves … it’s not the planet that will die … we will all die off. We have to start prioritizing how to save ourselves as a species rather than in trying to manage the economic portfolios of a handful of billionaires and their corporate shareholders. As soon as we are gone, none of those profits will matter.
I don’t disagree that there’s more that can be done to fight climate change, especially at the corporate/industry level.
But I’m certain that if a few million cyclists suddenly had to switch back to driving, the environmental impacts would be significant in more ways than one. Even just the need to build wider roads or more parking spaces to support this influx in drivers would be a disaster for communities.
From an individual level, every bit counts. Just like recycling, not wasting water, eating a more plant-based diet, reducing our plastic use, and cycling instead of driving, these efforts are multiplied by tens of millions of times over.