What Kind of Footprint Will You Leave?
“Why would we walk for an hour when we could take a 15-minute cab ride that would cost almost nothing?”
I chuckle at my dad’s question, until I realize that he isn’t kidding.
“The sun is shining and the weather is glorious,” I begin, taking his rhetorical question seriously. Hoping to guilt him into walking with me and also enlighten him about the obvious superiority of walking, I rattle off a few other benefits of walking: “It will help you think more clearly… We could always use some more exercise… The time walking is more time that we get to spend together… We won’t be responsible for any harmful emissions… You might notice some unexpected things along the way that we definitely wouldn’t get to see in a car…”
“That’s hard to argue with,” he concedes.
To me, walking is the natural choice.
While many people wonder, “Why walk when you could drive?” my personal philosophy is the opposite: “Why drive when you could walk?”
The former philosophy is more dominant than you might imagine. About 70 percent of all car trips in the United States are less than two miles — a perfectly walkable distance. Car trips of less than a mile account for more than 10 billion miles traveled per year. On foot, the average person could travel this same distance in a mere 15 minutes.
“If we all chose to power half of those [less than one mile] trips with our feet instead of petroleum, assuming an average fuel economy of 22 mpg and an average fuel price of $2.50/gallon, we would save about $575 million in fuel costs and about two million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year,” the Environmental Protection Agency asserts. “That’s like taking 400,000 cars off the road each year.”
Even though the saved car emissions from any one walking trip are not enough to move the needle on climate change, the collective impact of individuals’ decisions over time has the power to create tangible change — especially in cities overtaken by smog and other visible signs of pollution.
Still, how can we be sure that walking is in reality the form of transportation with the lower environmental footprint?
Economics professor Richard Mckenzie calls into question the very principle that walking is better for the environment than driving a car. Backed by an extensive analysis of food supply chain carbon emissions, he makes the controversial argument that driving is actually better for the planet than walking. After all, calories burned by walking must be replenished by food, which results in the waste of the fossil fuels and greenhouse gases that are inherent to the food production and transportation supply chain.
Professor Mckenzie raises an interesting point, but he fails to take into account a few important details.
The Pacific Institute, an environmental research organization, was determined to disprove Professor Mckenzie’s counterintuitive assertion. The Institute found that walking is only worse for the environment than driving in the case that a person is consuming a diet composed entirely of greenhouse-gas intensive food such as beef. Although the average American diet — stereotypically known for its fast-food burgers — is more energy-intensive than in many other countries, it has a considerable variety beyond only the most greenhouse-gas intensive foods. In reality, Americans eat a greater variety of less greenhouse-gas intensive foods, such as fruits and vegetables, than Professor Mckenzie accounts for. When considering the average American diet, “walking 1.5 miles would generate less than a quarter of the GHG that would be emitted if the person drove the same distance,” according to research by the Center for American Progress.
Professor Mckenzie’s argument also doesn’t consider the many environmental benefits of walking that go beyond greenhouse-gas emissions. Walking reduces traffic congestion, air and noise pollution, the destruction of open space, and auto-related accidents and deaths — all of which positively benefit the environment and society.
As someone who has been walking under the assumption that it is the environmentally favorable option, the Pacific Institute’s research was a source of great relief.
In confronting the global environmental crisis, walking is a vehicle for minimizing harmful emissions, understanding the environment, and advocating for environmental preservation. Catalyzing the kind of change capable of moving the needle on climate change will require a societal shift towards environmental stewardship that affords all people the opportunity to walk in nature, as you’ll learn in my book, It Starts with a Step. Together, our steps have the power to change our environmental footprint from one of pollution and destruction to one of respect and conservation.
Want to join me in walking for a better world? Email me at crc107@georgetown.edu or connect with me on LinkedIn. To read more about how you can change the world by walking, check out my latest book It Starts with a Step on Amazon.
