Originally Posted by
nuxx
Hmmm... primarily biking impacts personal health and local environments (both quite dramatically too!)... however the resulting peripherary displacement of motor traffic in a climate context is an absolutely minuscule effect. So I certainly wouldn't say "a big one" ...vote green, avoid plane travel, buy local produce, figure out a low emmission heating solution for your house and... vote green. Without systemic change at the highest policy levels we don't stand a chance... your personal choices and voting with your wallet counts too - but primarily as a signal rather than directly, because globally even entire countries are still a minority here... So you can easily be driving a gas-gussler and still be hurting the climate less than the biking enthusiast who flies cross atlantic 4 times a year... I'm in no way a saint in this respect :/
We are in agreement. There are a lot of green types among the bike commuters here on this forum. If you're right that "without systemic change at the highest policy levels" etc (and I tend to mostly agree with this as well at the moment) ... I think my point was that making appeals like that here on the commuter bike forum is sort of like "preaching to the choir". And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just not as effective at getting message out to where it needs to be heard, if that makes sense. Also in this case, it sounded like the appeal I was commenting on was being made especially to Americans and was hoping that @
Leisesturm might explain how Americans have more of a responsibility than anybody else, IF that's what he meant, because that's how I read it. I'm also mindful that many of our commuter members here are from elsewhere in the world. It's one reason of many that I love this forum, among the many reasons I don't love it very much sometimes.