Environmental Conservation 32 (3): 197–202 © 2005 Foundation for Environmental Conservation doi:10.1017/S037689290500247X Exercise-based transportation reduces oil dependence, carbon emissions and obesity PAUL A.T. HIGGINS* 1223 1 / 2 O Street NW, Washington, DC 20005, USA Date submitted: 2 March 2005 Date accepted: 1 October 2005 SUMMARY Societal dependence on oil leads to increasingly negative social consequences throughout the world, including climate change, air pollution, political and economic instability, and habitat degradation. Reliance on the automobile for transportation also contributes to a sedentary lifestyle, an obesity epidemic and poor health. These problems are particularly pronounced in the USA, which currently consumes c. 27% of global oil production and produces c. 25% of global carbon emissions, and where c. 65% of adults are overweight or obese. Other countries throughout the world that replicate or hope to replicate the automobile-based lifestyle of the USA face similar problems now or in the near future. This paper develops and applies calculations relating the distances that could be travelled through recommended daily walking or cycling with weight loss, oil consumption and carbon emissions. These straightforward calculations demonstrate that widespread substitution of driving with distances travelled during recommended daily exercise could reduce the USA’s oil consumption by up to 38%. This saving far exceeds the amount of oil recoverable from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, suggesting that exercise can reduce foreign oil dependence and provide an alternative to oil extraction from environmentally sensitive habitat. At the same time, an average individual who substitutes this amount of exercise for transportation would burn respectively c. 12.2 and 26.0 kg of fat per year for walking and cycling. This is sufficient to eliminate obese and overweight conditions in a few years without dangerous or draconian diet plans. Furthermore, a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of c. 35% is possible if the revenue saved through decreased health care spending on obesity is redirected toward carbon abatement. As a result, exercise-based transportation may constitute a favourable alternative to the energy and diet plans that are currently being implemented in the USA and may offer better development choices for developing countries. ∗ Correspondence: Dr Paul Higgins Tel: +1 510 717 4088 e-mail: phiggins@nature.berkeley.edu Keywords: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, climate protec- tion, energy policy, habitat conservation, Kyoto Protocol INTRODUCTION Use of the automobile for personal transportation confers considerable individual benefits, such as the ability to travel quickly, easily and independently over long distances. However, car travel also causes substantial societal costs in the form of air pollution, climate change, habitat degradation, political instability and economic insecurity. In addition, reliance on the automobile contributes to a sedentary lifestyle and resulting poor health (USDHHS [USA Department of Health and Human Services] 1996; NIH [USA National Institute of Health] 1998; Must et al. 1999; Sothern et al. 1999; Brown et al. 2000). Most notably, low rates of physical activity in the USA partly explain why c. 65% of Americans are obese or overweight (Flegal et al. 2002) because weight gain or loss is determined by the balance of energy intake (eating) and energy expenditure (exercise) (Pi-Sunyer 2003). The resulting health care expenditures are substantial with c. US$ 117 billion spent annually in the USA on health care for obesity and overweight alone (Colditz 1999; CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] 2003). Including other health care costs associated with physical inactivity leads to even higher estimates: c. US$ 28.7 billion annually for the state of California (Chenoweth 2005) and c. US$ 8.9 billion annually for the state of Michigan (Chenoweth et al. 2003). Therefore, substitution of recommended daily exercise (Institutes of Medicine of the National Academies 2002), such as walking or cycling, for driving could improve health while reducing oil consumption and carbon dioxide emissions (Higgins & Higgins 2005). I demonstrate here that adopting previously recommended levels of daily exercise by substituting the distances covered during one hour of walking or cycling for car travel could help alleviate three of the most pressing problems that all countries currently face: oil dependence, climate change and health care. In the case of the USA, adoption of recommended exercise guidelines could save more oil than is contained in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), reduce carbon emissions far below the reduction required by the Kyoto Protocol at no net cost and greatly improve the health of the citizens of the USA.