Bikes aren't just transportation, they are climate action

California Governor Jerry Brown kicked off the Global Climate Action Summit with a big announcement, so big that according to David Roberts of Vox, it "was so out of left field and yet so profound in its implications that few in the media, or even in California, seem to have fully absorbed it yet." He has declared that by 2045, the state will be totally carbon neutral -- the entire state economy. As Roberts notes, this is a very big deal.

Bikes - they may be the single best
way to decarbonize transportation.

SB 100, the bill Brown signed on Monday, commits the state to clean electricity by 2045, but electricity only accounts for about 16 percent of California’s greenhouse gas emissions. Brown’s executive order would commit the state to doing something about the other 84 percent — transportation, building heating and cooling, industry, all the many and varied energy services that rely on direct fossil fuel combustion rather than electricity.

That's a tall order. How are we going to decarbonize transportation? We can't all drive Teslas. Over at Greenbiz, Andrea Learned suggests a new emphasis on bikes and e-bikes. 

Read the Treehugger story by Lloyd Alter - “Bikes aren't just transportation, they are climate action.”