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A gallon of gasoline has 31,000 calories (1 US gallon = 3.7l). Thats right, cars use a lot of energy. And more to the point, liquid fuels have a lot of stored energy. Well, millions of years of sunshine, boiled down into a convenient, smelly substance called gasoline or diesel or propane or natural gas. Its a pretty sweet deal we get to use all that energy.
Lets say you live 10km (6 miles) from work and you drive there today. Lets assume you have a really efficient car, just for fun. You get 29 miles to the gallon. That should mean that you could get about 4.5 trips to or from work per gallon. But, you also use your car to pickup groceries, kids etc. So lets say you are using 1/2 gallon of gas per day to work and back. Thats still 15,500 calories per day.. We won't even count the invested calories for the automobile or the infrastructure to support it.
Well, what are the alternatives today? (not flying cars or hydrogen powered submarines).
You would burn about .035 calories per pound of body weight. And lets assume that you are out of shape from eating too many bon bons on your weekend joy rides in the car. So you are 200 lbs and it takes you and hour and fifteen minutes to get to work. (200* 0.035 * 75 ) = Thats 520 calories one way, or 1050 for return. Plus, its going to take you a little longer to get to work.
A bus with 40 people in it used about 45% of the fuel a car does per person. So with the bus you are using about 7250 calories per day.
Biking burns about .049 calories per pound per minutes and it will take you about 30 minutes to cover 10 kilometers (200 * 0.049 * 30) = 249 calories per trip, or about 500 calories per day.
I don't know why anyone would really want to share a ride, when they can drive their own car. I know some areas do car pool, but its typically done by people who live really far from work. +1 hour or more. If's that you, car pooling is not going to help much when gasoline is $3/l. It will be suggested that you get a job closer to where you live, or move closer to work by anyone who has spent time looking at our energy depleted future.
When we reach peak oil and/or the environment starts to really feel the effects of global warming, we might want to reduce the amount of energy we are consuming daily. Being closer to work will help you reduce you dependence on expensive and destructive liquid fuel products. Think about being able to get to the city/town center by walking/ biking or a short (<30min) bus ride. If you are further than that, you will be burning more time and energy than you may be able to afford to get to things like work, markets, cultural events and participate in civic life.
Never mind the fact that fact that we used huge amounts of fuel getting out large behinds around. There is the matter of the foods we eat. There are huge amounts of fossil fuels used in the production and distribution, cooling, drying, freeze drying, colouring and killing of our food. Thats why its important to eat local.