It’s practically a fisking

And then there’s the carbon footprint. When car drivers cruise Yonge Street on Saturday night, their metabolisms are more or less flat-lined. They just sit there, burning up little energy personally but paying for the cost of their automobile’s carbon footprint via taxes and fees. Bike riders grinding up the same route burn up a lot more carbohydrates, which their bodies convert into carbon dioxide and exhale, adding to their carbon footprint. The volumes are small, but it all adds up, and bicyclists don’t pay

did. that. guy. really. wrote. that???????

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I get the feeling the original writer doesn’t really buy into this “global warming” business, so he tries to make it look like a futile battle because nothing you can do will decrease carbon emissions.

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Wait, if exercise is causing global warming, do I have to pay an extra tax on my Ab-Lounger? Because I’ll just be fat, thanks, and then I’ll use up EXTRA oxygen just driving my fat whalish ass down to the Dairy Queen to get the Fat Bastard Blizzard.

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And believe it or not, bicycles do have some effect on roads. They may be lighter than cars, but it comes down to weight/area of contact, as well as the suction seal of the tyre, not that that’s relevant to sealed pavements.
I’m not doing the numbers here, so I’m not going out on a limb and saying that it’s a significant effect, but it isn’t fair to dismiss it out of hand, either.

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I’m not doing the numbers here, so I’m not going out on a limb and saying that it’s a significant effect, but it isn’t fair to dismiss it out of hand, either.

Yes, it is. In much the same way that it’s fair to dismiss breathing as a contributing factor to global warming when stacked against a coal fired power plant.

You’re dealing with multiple orders of magnitude difference. And that’s assuming you don’t consider how roads are funded – primarily through income taxes. No one is building a $200 million highway on $50 / year licensing permits. So unless all bikers are unemployed, they are in fact paying for the roads and the police and the sanitation and the carbon emissions and anything else the greater federal or state government handles.

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(16.06 x 10^6) / (10.5 x 10^9) does in fact roughly equal 0.001. But that’s .1%, not .001%. Not that it’s super relevant to the point, but still- minor correction.

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Should we tax nature, as well?

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Andrew W., unfortunately no one will ever be able to get a cockbite tax law passed.

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Andrew W.:

Cyclists aren’t some group of persecuted saints.

I once saw a cyclist eat a baby. Live. Feet first. Ever since, if I saw someone on a bike, I got out my gun.

Lawnmower Boy:

We may –should!–will!– exempt bicyclists from these costs, especially given that they they pay taxes, especially with regard to policy.

That’s my point, though. Cyclists do pay for the road. When you’re shelling out 20-30% of your income (or more, you Canadians are a crazy lot) in income taxes, and one of the largest domestic expenditures is on highway infrastructure, how on earth do you conclude that a cyclist with an income isn’t paying for the roads?

Vehicle licensing is trivial in comparison. It’s as absurd as suggesting I don’t fund the State Department if I’ve never paid a fee to buy a passport.

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Well, Dayv, babies are high in carbs, and when you are on the fortieth mile of a ride, you need some quick energy.

Canadian babies are too sweet, though – you’d have to import some American babies, which taste like jerky and are high in protein.

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And it’s important that you eat those high-carb babies, so that you can rapidly convert those carbohydrates into carbon dioxide and destroy the earth’s climate that much more efficiently.

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