What shade of green?
April 25th, 2008
The Freakonomics blog has a guest post up that points out the short-sightedness of some efforts to go green:
The actor Ed Begley Jr. has a widely-circulated OpEd piece touting his eco-friendly activities, featuring a proud announcement that his exercise on his stationary bicycle generates the electricity he uses to toast two pieces of bread.
Now those two pieces give him 200 calories, but he burns at least 100 calories on the bike. So half of his eco-friendly exercise is lost because he needs to obtain additional food from elsewhere to maintain his weight — food whose growth and distribution have environmental consequences too, as does the manufacture of his bicycle.
The rest can be read here.
Being passionate isn’t always enough.
