A miscalculation about bicycles.

• Author: Coe, Kent H.
• Position: On the Ecology of Meat, GM Crops, and the Embodied Energy in a Car - Letter to the Editor

In the April/May 2004 Matters of Scale, you claim that a bicyclist will get the equivalent of 31 miles to the gallon if he eats meat, versus 300 mpg if he gets his energy from wheat. The motorist driving the Honda Civic would be getting 32 mpg. But that analysis is biased against the bicyclist, because it doesn't include the breakdown of embodied energy for the motorist. The assumption is that no matter what a motorist eats, he or she will always get 32 mpg. You should have provided a breakdown of the energy that the driver of the car is using, as you did for the...