A friend just posted this link to me http://www.viarail.ca/en/car-free-day, where VIA claims that they are the “greener” way. “To celebrate Car Free Day on September 22, 2009, VIA Rail is giving you an extra incentive to leave your car at home and help contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by taking the train instead.”

Always on the cutting edge when it comes to energy and sustainability, I beg to differ. First, let’s establish that VIA runs on fossil fuels, I would be surprised if they have another source of energy for any of their processes. Every single time I have taken VIA in the summer, I can tell you it’s colder than a meatlocker. It is so cold, that I can’t sleep because it’s bone chilling cold. Colder than a bus or an airplane.  Given that VIA is apparently concerned about the environment, and hopefully my health, I once asked if they wouldn’t mind turning down the air conditioning. They told me they have no control over the internal temperature of the train. So, I challenge VIA to reduce their fossil fuels by reducing the air conditioning in the summer and actually being efficient, rather than claiming that they are.

Second, when visiting friends in Montréal, I once dared to be green: I rode my extremely tiny folding bicycle to the VIA station, folded it to a size smaller than a suitcase and was planning to bring it as my luggage and then ride it to my destination in Montréal, thereby bypassing taxis and public transit (bicycles are “greener” than either). When I got to the station, I was informed by VIA that I was not allowed to bring my folding bicycle on. Even though it folded to the size of a suitcase, fitting with other suitcases on the suitcase rack, and would not topple over like a regular bike, and they wouldn’t have even noticed it if I had packed it in a bag I was NOT. ALLOWED. TO. BRING. IT. ON. We discussed for a while that it makes sense to have policies like that for large things that fall like skis etc, but the VIA staff were petty bureaucrats to the core. They even could have put it in a plastic bag to protect the edges, but they absolutely refused.

I think of most long distance transit possibilities, the train is the best chance, but if VIA really wants to be green I really think they need to fix the large energy consuming equipment like air conditioning, and they also need to fix their policies and customer service so that people can travel in a truly “green” manner. Even the link I gave above is essentially only public relations, because if they had improved their fossil fuel consumption considerably, they would have printed a quantity of green house gas reductions.

After the bicycle incident I started carpooling to and from Montréal which I suspect might actually be “greener” than the train, due to likely comparable or better fuel economy per passenger.

South Park’s Smug Alert episode is a great pick-me-up when I’m feeling down on (i.e. embarrassed by) the air pollution debate. (or try this site, and search “smug alert”).

I remember in my early teens when public education campaigns about AIDS transmission were everywhere, in order to combat prejudice against people living with AIDS or HIV positive, while attempting to reduce transmission rates. In my grade 6 sex ed class the public health nurse was bombarded with all sorts of behaviour scenarios, which bordered on *ridiculous*, made up by my classmates on how to avoid getting it. We established that no, you couldn’t get AIDS from wearing second hand clothes, from a hand shake, from touching the same doorknob, etc. And we also established that all the scenarios of someone’s blood reaching your own blood stream (what if someone had a paper cut and touched X object, and then I touched it, and then….) were pretty unlikely. I still shudder to think of some of those questions, and the seriousness with which the questioner asked them.

Now that climate change is all the rage, and changing behaviour is still all the rage, and even though climate change is not a disease, it’s produced by the state of the economy (hence, ripe for good ol’ finger pointin’), I see that we’re back at it with the hypothetical behaviour based scenarios. While many like to believe that eating local food, not driving a car and turning out the lights results in less greenhouse gas emissions, there is lots of evidence to the contrary. And rather than focusing on the fact that this is because of the lack of pricing goods for externalities and many other policy reasons, researchers and pundits are all sitting around describing different scenarios for human behaviour, some pretty ridiculous, to show that conventional environmental wisdom does not reign.

The latest is Chris Goodall’s assertion that walking to the grocery store could be worse than driving, once you take into account the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of food to fuel you. What’s really hilarious is that this created quite the stir amongst all sorts of economists/think tanks/scientists. This caused the Pacific Institute, general debunker of climate change myths (like the one about the Hummer being better for the environment than a hybrid) to write a 7 page article on this, including 3 pages of end notes. They reviewed the options of beef (sirloin versus ground), a glass of milk, and the full on vegetarian apple. And apparently Goodall has a point, walking does not turn out to be better unless you are a vegetarian/vegan.

Comments on the Globe and Mail include that these people did not compare how much the driver ate (did they? maybe I should check…..See? *ridiculous*). And then we could get into that since in North America we overeat, maybe the driver and the walker ate the same amount, but the walker actually *burned* the calories, whereas the driver’s calories turned to fat. I think we need a nutritionist/lifestyle expert to weigh in on this one. And then we could get into the debate that food is no longer food anymore anyways, and in fact, as my-best-friend-growing-up’s dad would say, full of petroleum products, and then we’d have to evaluate that too. I mean, the Pacific Institute compared an apple to sirloin, when in America, it probably would have been more appropriate to assume a Big Mac (TM) containing 100% Pure Beef (TM, or whatever it was–i.e. NOT real beef) versus an apple pie from a box (ahem, full of petroleum products)….and this could go on forever, no?

I think all of this behaviour scenario analysis for climate change, while it works in the health sector to explain public health issues, puts too much emphasis on the individual. And while some emphasis is warranted (like, eating less meat), some of it just makes us feel trapped in our lack of options. A recent Greenpeace report shows that the biggest culprit in greenhouse gas emissions from food is from “the massive overuse of fertilisers….one of the most potent greenhouse gases is nitrous oxide (N20), with a global warming potential of some 296 times higher than that of carbon dioxide.” Some recent studies have shown that food that has been grown with less greenhouse gas emissions but has been transported a long distance has a smaller carbon footprint than food that has been produced locally, using a large amount of fertiliser/high greenhouse gas production methods.

I say we go back to finger pointing, and start targeting agriculture methods, and then cars can go back to being the “real” culprit, and then we can point the finger at them too! And fast food joints? You can buy the fat from them to produce biodiesel to power your cars, so as long as the co-benefits are okay, fast food is okay too, right?

And until then, I’m going to think about whether I can continue to feel morally superior to car drivers as I ride my bicycle around town.

I’m getting $7.50 back from the TTC as strike compensation!

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