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I HAVE just read an article in The Times, by Leo Lewis, titled ‘Get a bike and save the planet (in 87 years).’ In it, Lewis speaks about Tokyo’s “environmental kicks” where the city has gone “bicycle barmy” and employed the mode of transport in the hope of replacing the recession-biting car.

The first impression of the bicycle, writes Lewis, is a positive one: “a bicycle runs the sales patter, will save on the daily cost of a commute, produces no C02 and is environmentally non-rapacious.” Conversely, we are then led on to believe that the bicycle does not benefit the planet whatsoever because the cost of a thirsty cyclist drinking Ito En green tea, eating bananas from Thailand, washing extra clothing, and finally, the footprint of the production the bike itself has clocked up, means that it’ll be “about 87 years before that bike “saves” an ounce of petrol.” Now, these are all perfectly valid points which evidently question the worldwide bicycle schemes and view of how to correct global warming, however, if we take a more global view and adjust our country-specific focus to say, Kenya, we may result in a completely different conclusion.

In Kenya, people walk or run to work with suit and jacket – and I don’t remember seeing one person with a plastic water bottle in his or her hand, or a water bottle of any type, for that note. Not one. The roads there are what we might call off-road, and hence this is harder on the feet and the whole body than we might find walking on a concrete pavement in the UK. These people walk for miles to work, and they do it every day and have done it everyday for their lives. It is evident to any Western onlooker of the sheer fitness of these well-adjusted walkers and runners. As such, we might notice how a bicycle scheme in Kenya would work much better than in, say, the UK.

Is it not true that a fitter athlete can push his body harder? Is it not true that a fitter, well-practiced athlete’s body, providing he or she is healthy, does not need as much water as an unfit, unpracticed athlete? That a fit, healthy and practiced athlete probably won’t sweat as much as the ordinary person? Therefore, it seems self-explanatory that we might assume that in the long-term – less than 87 years – such bicycle schemes may well benefit our environmental struggles, not to mention our fitness.

To add to this, although I have certainly never been to Tokyo, I can relate to city life in the UK, and can most certainly compare the differences between cycling in quiet, suburban areas, and attempting to survive the length of a busy main road on your bike: the second is, quite frankly, stressful, stinky and noisy. Naturally, then, we are going to need more water in such places, and to top it off, the obnoxiously suffocating heat, and air-blocking fumes of the passing traffic is going to make us more sweaty and hence in need of a change of clothes before we get to work.

The end-result of all of this, quite obviously, is a cyclist who doesn’t need to drink so much Ito En green tea, or to eat so many bananas, or to change so many shirts

Despite the cycling initiatives being introduced into such stuffy places, the aim is that there will be many less – perhaps eventually no – cars on the road in several years time. Any that are still on the road will be replaced by more environmentally friendly ones such as electrical and solar powered cars. Here, then, is the cutting point: no cars means no stress, no stink, and no noise as well as resulting in a wide space for cyclists to lounge in. An entire society that cycles to work every day in an environment which features enough decontaminated oxygen is also going to be a fitter one. The end-result of all of this, quite obviously, is a cyclist who doesn’t need to drink so much Ito En green tea, or to eat so many bananas, or to change so many shirts, and when the car production lines are replaced by cycling-production lines, the bicycle need no longer be shipped through three separate countries before arriving in its distributing country.

So, to the professor who named 87 years as the point at which the bike may begin to save petrol, and to Mr Leo Lewis, whose article I here refer to, well, perhaps I am looking at the long-shot, but I believe that the environmentally-friendly and fit society described above, with a much smaller footprint size than in several decades gone, is actually less than the 87 years suggested. Plus, I would like to think that there may be a chance that Tokyo’s initiative works once its citizens become adjusted to the lifestyle and no longer need to endlessly drink or to eat bananas or change shirts.

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