Daily Score Blog

I have an untidy habit of eating while I'm working on my computer. Heck, right now I'm eating a doughnut while I write this post. 

Unfortunately, my habit inevitably results in little crumbs of sandwich or potato chips or whatever making their way onto my computer keyboard. Every once in a while I look down at my crumb-ridden keyboard, get disgusted, and then embark on a cleaning frenzy. And, as many office workers may know, one of the easiest ways to clean a keyboard is with those compressed chemical canister thingies (pictured above). So the other day, while I was merrily blasting away at my keyboard I decided to read the contents. Big mistake.

My little 10-ounce canister contains 100 percent tetrafluoroethane, a greenhouse gas that's sometimes known as HFC-134a (meaning it's a form of hydrofluorocarbon). Before your eyes glaze over, just keep in mind that over a 20 year period, HFC-134a is roughly 3,300 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Nice.

So unless I missed something in the number crunching, using up my 10-ounce can of cleaner will have the same climate-changing effect over the next 20 years as burning at least 100 gallons of gasoline. With that much gas I could drive my trusty Honda Civic from Seattle to New York City. And then back to Chicago. And I would likely still have plenty of fuel leftover for side-trips.

All that, packed into a canister retailing for $10.99 at the Office Depot around the corner.

This is not a good idea.

And it strikes me as an instance where the best remedy is pretty simple: just ban it.

Bicycles may be the most energy efficient, healthful, and affordable form of personal transportation. But they are only practical to the extent that our communities are bikable—that is, that they provide safe routes that connect the places we need to go.

And the most important thing to remember about bike routes is that they are only as useful as their least-passable portion. A big hill can nullify an otherwise excellent route. For my kids, for example, soccer practice, drama, and scouts all lie on the other side of a big hill, so their biking is limited. They’re jealous of the residents of Trondheim, Norway, who climb a similar incline on an innovative bike lift shown in this video.