Motorbikes: The Environment's Real Foe
The website Green Choices, “a group of individuals committed to providing consumer information on the green choices available,” recently published an article recommending environmentally-conscious consumers to switch from cars to motorbikes. Their argument was that motorbikes provided the individual freedoms associated with cars, at a lower environmental cost. The main evidence listed to support this claim is that motorbikes need less fuel, generate less emissions and therefore causes less environmental damages in their production. But should we really ditch the bulky cars and go for the smaller and more efficient options? They can not only avoid congestions and carry you through town faster, but cause less harm for the environment too!
Studies replicated and supported around the world by institutions such as the Kanazawa University, the European Union and even Mythbusters have pronounced that motorbikes do damage to the environment to a much greater extent than cars do.
Though these claims may seem credible at first glance, a brief dive into concrete research and data is enough to debunk the myth. Studies replicated and supported around the world by institutions such as the Kanazawa University, the European Union and even Mythbusters have pronounced that motorbikes do damage to the environment to a much greater extent than cars do.
Although it is true that motorbikes use less fuel and emit less carbon dioxide, this is made up many times over by the gargantuan amount of smog-forming hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen, as well as the intensely toxic carbon monoxide that they produce. On average, motorbikes from the 2000s generate 416% more hydrocarbons, 3,220% more oxides of nitrogen and 8,065% more carbon monoxide than cars of the same decade do.
According to research done by the University of Kanazawa, the hydrocarbon-filled exhaust released from these vehicles can act as a teratogen that causes the malfunction of human embryos; in moderate amounts, hydrocarbon is capable of inducing genetic mutations and complications in testosterone and oestrogen creation.
One of the major reasons behind why motorbikes emit so much toxic greenhouse gases is the sheer lack of converters, sensors and other emission control devices packed onto passenger vehicles since the 70s. Because of its prevalence, there has been a stronger push towards cleaning up automobiles. However, this kind of advocacy is absent in the history of two-wheelers, and thus producers have been able to get away with all manners of disease-inducing gases. Regardless, if they had wanted to place more converters on two-wheelers, it wouldn’t have helped much anyway; there is simply not enough space on motorbikes for control systems as comprehensive as those on cars.
The claim that motorbikes use up fewer resources when built, specifically “around one-seventh of the resources needed to build a car,” has also turned out to be false. Using the online Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment, one could easily see how the construction of a $15,000 car on average generates 9.41 metric tonnes of CO2 , while the construction of a $15,000 motorcycle generates only 13.7.
If motorbikes were actually that environmentally friendly, the motorbike centers of the world, namely Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Vietnam and other developing countries in the South and South East Asian region, would also be the cleanest. Reality tells otherwise. Research conducted by the Kanawaza University since 2007 has also found that in seven of Asia’s major cities, air pollution exceeds international standards due to the hordes of motorbikes that fill up urban areas. In this part of the world, most people do not feel safe leaving their homes without a face mask and protective eyewear, as thirty minutes of exposure to “street gases” are enough to cause anything from minor discomfiture to an actual bout of dizziness and coughing. In either case, the build-up of inhaled particles in the lungs does not fail to cause harm in the long run.
I am not saying that cars are friends of the environment either, but they are only the lesser of the two evils, and the Earth would be much better off without them. However, claiming that we can solve this issue by each hopping onto a motorbike is simply bogus. The true long-term solution is nothing less than a firm commitment to public transportation, bikes and better yet, scientific innovation that produce green vehicles like electric cars for increasingly lower prices.