Climate Change Solutions - July 6, 2021

In terms of environmental impact, there’s no competition between cars and bicycles. Cars crowd roads with traffic and noise and emit greenhouse gasses and other pollutants as a part of both regular operations and manufacture and disposal. While bicycles also emit a relatively small amount of greenhouse gases during their production and disposal, riders need less infrastructure and space to use bikes, create less noise, and are involved in far fewer fatal or near-fatal accidents a year.

For many years, bicycle groups, academics, and public transit agencies have advocated for increasing public funding and attention on biking infrastructure, arguing that dollar for dollar, bicycle infrastructure serves the transportation needs of more people than roads and highways. [click for more]

In 2020, 43 percent of new electricity-generating capacity built in the United States was solar. As these projects proliferate, it’s critical to ensure that solar installations are designed with the well-being of the surrounding environment in mind. One solution is planting vegetation between rows of solar panels. This dual use of land bolsters pollinator populations, whose rapid decline in recent years threatens agriculture in the United States and globally. [click for more]