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Walking may be worse for the environment than driving 8/11/2013
It may be counterintuitive, but walking might be worse for the environment than driving.
 
That's the conclusion Richard B. Mckenzie, a professor of Economics at the Paul Merage School of Business comes to in his blog post on EconLib.
 
Because of the way food supply chains work, walking a mile — and consequently expending calories that need to be replaced — might actually be more wasteful and polluting than driving a mile.
 
He takes the example of a 180 pound man who chooses to walk a mile to work instead of driving. Walking a mile will burn 200 calories more than the 2000 calories he burns just to survive. Producing food worth 200 calories takes up to 3000-4000 calories. So a person that drives a high fuel economy car that burns 40 miles per gallon will be using only a half to two-thirds of the energy than the walker uses in replacing the calories he expended on walks.
 
The heavier you get, the less efficient walking is, as a heavier person would burn more calories from walking a mile. So walking can be 1.5 to 2 times more polluting than driving a high mileage car.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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