Misconceptions About Green Living

1. Biking to work is better for the environment. And it's free!


First of all biking is not free. It burns calories and raises your metabolism meaning that you would have to eat more food. This food. Using these assumptions (all relatively in favor of biking winning) I have found that driving your car costs about ten times more:
-140 pounds
-$20 a day on food
-Without excersize- 2000 calories per day
-$30,000 car
-150,000 mile car lifetime

2. Organic cows (meat and milk) are better for the environment.

Yes some pesticides are kept out of the environment. But these pesticides could have been used to make the animals grow bigger, faster and produce more milk. Since the cows can't grow as big and as fast, more cows have to be raised for a longer period of time. Cows release methane, a greenhouse gas that causes global warming. Since there are more cows being raised longer more methane is emitted into the atmosphere leading to a speeding up of global warming.


3. Planting more trees can reverse global warming

Trees serve as storage centers for large amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. This pulls CO2 of of the atmosphere and reverses global warming; while the tree is alive. When the tree dies it decomposes and slowly releases all of the CO2 held in bonds as it is eaten and metabolized by decomposers (This is just like humans releasing CO2). Also if the tree is cut down and burned the CO2 is also relased just much faster as carbon in the tree oxidizes and bonds with oxygen in the air.