Walking more damaging than driving

This morning on the John Gambling Show I heard about an article from THE TIMES in London. Chris Goodall, auther of "How to Live a Low Carbon Life" and Green Party parliamentary candidate, is the latest serious thinker to add his two cents to the global warming controversy.


Mr. Goodall believes that walking does more than driving to cause global warming. Food production is so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes, provided they remembered to switch off the TV.


The full article can be reached at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/, then click on UK, then on Science. The title of the article is WALKING TO THE SHOPS 'DAMAGES PLANET MORE THAN GOING BY CAR'. Hope you can access it.

There are some interesting items in this article, such as trees, regarded as shields against global warming because they absorb carbon were found by German scientists to be major producers of methane, a much more harmful greenhouse gas.

The answer seems to be just sit on your couch, eat less but eat locally grown food and carry it home from the supermarket in paper bags in your car.

That article gave me the inspiration to cancel my exercise class today. I've done my part to save the planet.