this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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They also don't factor in the greenwashing of using solar panels to cover wasteful cars, when it would be much better for the environment to not have a parking lot to put solar panels over.
It sucks that for the past 50-100 years, places have been built somewhere on the scale between favoring cars to outright hostile to any other form of transportation. On the plus side, most of these places are so shoddily built that it is cheaper to tear them down than to maintain them. So destroying suburbia and replacing it with walkable neighborhoods is actually quite profitable for everyone except the car industry, not to mention beneficial for everyone living there.
I don't think suburbia even needs to be destroyed and left fallow; anything with a motor smaller than a car works fine with car infrastructure, as long as there's not shittons of cars. It can just be densified by building regular parks or buildings where the parking lots were if the use of cars were restricted. My current motorbike gets 100mpg, my old one 160, and there's some electrics I've seen that easily keep up with traffic.
Unfortunately, and I learned this relatively recently, motorcycles are worse for GHG emissions than cars because of catalytic converters (and probably just better combustion in general).
Agreed on electric, though.
Euro 3 went into effect in 2007, nearly all bikes made in the last 20 years have cats.
As far as combustion goes, there's way more variability between a nc750 revving to 6500, a Ducati reving to 16500, and a Honda Wave with 110ccs displacement. You can probably get a lot of answers.
Even the worst, most pollution inducing motorcycle on the planet doesn't hold a candle to my 90s truck.
Hell, even most modern trucks are better despite being massive, considering the improvements to fuel efficiency and such...
Arguing a motorcycle is worse because one specific area of its carbon footprint is slightly higher than cars depending on model of both is weird to me.
And I don't remember the last time I saw a motorcycle without the obvious cat hugging the engine before it winds to the muffler. Note: usually the motorcycles I get to see close are people who are more environment conscious than your average redneck. I'm sure the shop down the road specializes in removing them. I KNOW they offer "diesel tuning services" to let people "roll coal" so it wouldn't surprise me...
Do you have any links to any recent info? This link makes it seem like its still not great, bit it like to see actual hard data.
https://gearjunkie.com/motors/motorcycle-vs-vehicle-emissions