Daily Score Blog

In case you missed it, there was a bit of a kerfuffle in the blogosphere a few months back, concerning the climate impacts of walking vs. driving.  Apparently, some folks -- New York Times columnist and blogger John Tierney in particular -- were spreading the claim that a pleasant stroll to the store might actually release more GHGs than getting behind the wheel.  Other bloggers picked up the meme, including one post with the headline:  "Be Green:  Drive."

The idea may sound absurd, but there's a legitimate insight behind it.  Walking burns calories, which come from food -- and it takes an enormous quantity of fossil fuels to produce, process, and transport everything that we eat.  Add in the other GHGs from agriculture -- everything from cow manure to emissions from synthetic fertilizers -- and you've got a potent global warming cocktail in every glass of milk.

But our doppelgangers at the Pacific Institute did their homework, compiling evidence about climate emissions from both cars and food.  And they came to the conclusion that walking emits about one-quarter the GHGs of driving -- earning a partial retraction from Tierney.  (You go, PacInst!)

But looking at the numbers, I think that the Pacific Institute's numbers are conservative. In fact, I think that when I take a short walk, I'm being at least 12 times as friendly to the climate as if I drove.  Your mileage may vary, of course; but my shoes get about 220 miles per gallon.

Via Erica Barnett, Adam Stein has a fascinating post on San Francisco's move to start treating parking rationally. Here's Stein on parking spaces: 

...their supply is fixed but the demand fluctuates greatly by day and by hour. For most goods, pricing matches supply with demand. But the price for parking is inflexible. Most spots are free. Others are metered at an artificially low rate. Residential permit parking creates local distortions. Private lots skim those willing to pay the most.

The traditional solution to parking problems is to increase the number of spots available, providing yet another subsidy to drivers and pushing yet another cost onto everybody else... Oversupply of parking encourages driving. Undersupply creates a lottery system in which people circle endlessly looking for a spot, or park illegally. In either case, the result is more congestion, more carbon emissions, and less livable cities.

San Francisco's solution to the supply and demaind problem is just what you'd expect from a city of left-wing commie radicals: a free market.