This Fucking Guy. Washington state Rep Ed Orcutt Believes Bikes Release More CO2 than Cars

Up in Washington state there lives a man, by the name of Ed Orcutt.  By some miraculous chain of events he holds public office, and yet he believes a bicyclist burns just as much CO2 as someone driving a car.  This story brings together everything that is wrong with transportation policy in America.  The story was first broke by the Seattle bike blog.  Ed made the clam in an email exchange with a local bike shop owner, who opposed a new bike tax in Washington's transportation budget.

“Also, you claim that it is environmentally friendly to ride a bike. But if I am not mistaken a cyclists [sic] has an increased heart rate and respiration. That means the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider. Since CO2 is deemed a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride.”

Let's start at the impetus for the whole thing, a proposed $25 bike tax on any bicycle sold in Washington state that is over $500.  The justification for this tax being that bicyclists don't pay their fair share of road and infrastructure costs because they don't pay gas tax.  FUCK THAT.  First, gas tax accounts for a very small percentage of a transportation budget.  The majority of road construction is paid for by taxes other than gas tax.

Next, the CO2 that is emitted by bicyclists is CO2 that already existed in the atmostphere.  When you drive a car, you're releasing CO2 that's been sequestered as dino goo for thousands of years, not too mention a bunch of other toxic shit.  Not to mention when you buy gas you're probably funding some crazy Sheik in the middle east or some KGB loving Russian Oligarch.  Bicycling is HIGHLY efficient.  Here are some estimates published by the Seattle times:

On average, cars emit about three-quarters of a pound of carbon dioxide per mile, while bicycling releases just over 1 ounce per mile, including manufacturing, according to analysis by the European Cyclists Federation.

Bicycle gears are highly efficient, so food calories burned by a rider may well be equivalent to 650 miles per gallon, figures Todd Litman, of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute.

Lastly, shit like this just makes my head hurt.  Bicycling causes exponentially less impact than driving that we should be doing as much as we can to promote it, rather than trying to tax bike purchases more.  So hopefully this nutjob gets voted out sometime soon.