Does this consider the amount of energy (and carbon emissions) required/created in finding, drilling-for, pumping, transporting and refining oil, plus transporting the gasoline to the fuel station and then pumping it into the car? I'm guessing not. It's probably just looking at the emissions from the car vs. emissions from the cyclist PLUS the creating of the food.
I agree that meat production is energy-intensive, but I doubt it's worse than fuel production.
I believe all those factors required for producing the fuel for the car were considered, but keep in mind a lot of processes are also required for producing a single pound of meat (growing food for the animals, feed for livestock requires vast resources). I was very skeptical this could be the case too, I didn't do the calculations myself, here is the source:
By Daniel Thorpe with help from David Keith Paleo-diet cyclists warm the planet as much as Prius drivers — but under the usual (but crazy) assumption that nothing matters beyond 100 years in the future See our free course on edX that debates issues like this and teaches you how to do the kinds...
keith.seas.harvard.edu
"What about a meat-heavy diet, the Paleo diet? I looked at Paleo meal plans and academic lifecycle GHG estimates for the foods in those meal plans, and estimated the average emissions of a Paleo diet to be 5.4 gCO2e/kcal [v]. This gives us 135 gCO2e/km, very close to the Prius. What about a vegan? Vegan diets have much lower emissions, around 1.6 gCO2e/kcal [vi], for 40 gCO2e/km. This means that a biking vegan has less than a third the impact of an individual driving a Prius, and 1/7th the impact of an individual driving an average car."
You'd be surprised at how much energy is used in the production of a single pound of meat for typical human consumption:
"Pound for pound, meat has a much higher water footprint than vegetables, grains or beans. A single pound of beef takes, on average, 1,800 gallons of water to produce. Ninety-eight percent goes to watering the grass, forage and feed that cattle consume over their lifetime."
I still believe the average persons diet has some meat, but not nearly the all-beef diet required for your carbon footprint of bicycling per mile to approach that of an efficient gas car.
another source:
WASHINGTON – For World Water Day on 22 March, Humane Society International is urging consumers to eat a more plant-based...
www.hsi.org
The Top 8 Reasons to Eat Plant-Based for World Water Day
1. Farming (animal and plant) accounts for about
70 percent of water used in the world today, up to
92 percent of freshwater, with nearly one-third of that related to animal farming and growing crops to feed to animals.
2. Most of the total volume of water used for animal agriculture (
98 percent) refers to the water footprint of the feed for the animals. About one-third of the world’s grain and 80 percent of the world’s soya is fed to the animals we rear for food.
3. Intensive animal farming can cause serious water pollution such as eutrophication, an excessive amount of algae in the water caused by run-off of animal faeces and leftover feed, often leading to loss of fish and other aquatic wildlife.
4.
On average it takes between 15,000 and 20,000 litres of water to produce one kilogram of beef, which works out to approximately
3,000 litres of water to produce one 200g beef burger – the equivalent of 30 x 5-minute showers. (1x 200g beef burger = 30x 5-minute showers).
5. 96 percent of fish eaten in Europe comes from fresh-water fish farming, but the vast quantities of fish excrement and uneaten fish food that settles on the pond bed makes the perfect environment for the
production of the greenhouse gas methane.
6. A meat-free diet can
cut our water footprint in half! Studies show that a healthy meat-free diet reduces our water footprint by
up to 55%.
7. The
United Nations Environment Assembly says that plant-based burgers require between 75 – 99 per cent less water; 93 – 95 per cent less land; and generate 87 – 90 per cent fewer emissions than regular beef burgers.
8. “A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use. It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” said University of Oxford’s Joseph Poore, who led the most comprehensive
analysis of the damage farming does to the planet.
