‘Leading’ environmentalist: Walking causes more harm than driving
Just when you thought you’d heard it all:
Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.
Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.
The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.
“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”
Mr Goodall, Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon, is the latest serious thinker to turn popular myths about the environment on their head.
Catching a diesel train is now twice as polluting as travelling by car for an average family, the Rail Safety and Standards Board admitted recently. Paper bags are worse for the environment than plastic because of the extra energy needed to manufacture and transport them, the Government says.
Somebody better inform San Francisco about that plastic vs. paper “statistic.”
They don’t want us to drink water, don’t want us to walk, and want us to only use one square of toilet paper per powder room (or “john”) visit. What’s next?
One thing’s for sure: If somebody tries to take away my aerosol can of Rusk W8tless hairspray in the name of ‘turning back the clock’ on global warming, they’ll be in for a fight! 
Related: Make sure to check out this refutation of Newsweek’s ‘global warming denier’ hit piece from this past weekend.
Hat tip: Fellow global warming ‘denier’ Sev
Flashback: 29 Ways To Increase Global Warming