With the ever-present threat of climate change, many people are constantly talking about the most important thing we can do to cut carbon emissions. New research shows that cycling could be 10 times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero emissions cities.

In 2020, one in 50 new cars was fully electric, globally. Even if all new cars were electric, it would still take an estimated 15-20 years to replace the world’s cars running on fossil fuels.

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The emissions savings from switching to zero-carbon alternatives isn’t enough to make the difference we need in the time we have left to spare. Not to mention, electric cars aren’t completely emissions-free. The materials for the batteries, manufacturing, and the electricity used to run them all produce emissions.

Active traveling on the other-hand (walking and biking) is cheaper and better for both you and the environment. Research has shown that those who walk or cycle have lower carbon footprints than those who don’t even if they just walking and biking on top of motorized travel.

Researchers observed 4,000 people in London, Antwerp, Barcelona, Vienna, Orebro, Rome, and Zurich over a two-year period. Over the two years, participants logged a total of 10,00 travel diary entries documenting all the trips they make each day.

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We also estimate that urban residents who switched from driving to cycling for just one trip per day reduced their carbon footprint by about half a tonne of CO₂ over the course of a year, and save the equivalent emissions of a one-way flight from London to New York. If just one in five urban residents permanently changed their travel behavior in this way over the next few years, we estimate it would cut emissions from all car travel in Europe by about 8%.

Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

People who cycled on a daily basis had 84% lower carbon emissions from their daily travel than those who didn’t. Additionally, if the average person switched from a car to a bike just one day a week, they cut their emissions by a carbon footprint o 3.2kg of CO2. Research showed that emissions from cycling can be 30 times lower than a fossil fuel car, and 10 times lower than an electric car.

Within the next few decades, Big Meat and Big Dairy will surpass Big Oil for climate pollution, according to a new study by the non-profits GRAIN and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The jointly published study quantified emissions from 35 of the world’s largest meat and dairy companies.

The non-profit researches analyzed 35 of the meat and dairy industry’s biggest companies. The researchers warned that meat and dairy companies will overtake oil firms as the world’s biggest polluters. The authors of the study say that factory meat and dairy farms are ‘majorly overlooked climate culprits.

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According to the report, the five largest meat and dairy corporations—JBS, Tyson, Cargill, Dairy Farmers of America, and Fonterra—are already responsible for more annual greenhouse gas emissions than ExxonMobil, Shell, or BP.

They also found that businesses did a poor job reporting their emissions and targets, and many failed to report emissions entirely or excluded supply chain figures, which amount to 80 to 90 percent of total emissions.

Watch the video below to see how the meat industry could actually help reduce climate change.

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