Easy to do, but great for the greater good - on'ya bike!

R

iding a bicycle is relatively easy and simple, but the impact, both personally and on the greater good, can be massive.

Copenhagen is a wonderful example of that.

The Danish capital has motivated half of its habitants to commute to work by bicycle every day.

How did that come about? A half-century ago, the city’s inhabitants were becoming almost as reliant on cars as people anywhere else. But after the oil crisis of the 1970s, many Copenhagen residents made a personal commitment to ride bicycles rather than drive, out of moral principle, even if that was inconvenient for them.

The unintended consequence is a small, but significant contribution to mitigating climate change, along with improving the health of all those who ride bicycles.

The New York Times discusses this idealistic but concrete step in its story, “How Idealism, Expressed in Concrete Steps, Can Fight Climate Change”.