Aaron Naparstak , Brooklyn blogger, urban activist, and author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote to Road Rage," had an interesting piece on his blog about world oil usage and biking.

An editorial in the New York Times on April 20th, "How Dare They Use Our Oil!"
sounds all of the right notes. It lays down a brief but harsh critique
of the Bush administration’s continuing failure to address energy
policy in a serious way. And on the occasion of the Chinese president
Hu Jintao’s visit to the White House, it takes the administration to
task for "asking other countries to lay off the world’s oil supply so
America can continue to support its gas-guzzling Hummers." It almost
sounds like Bill Maher has joined the editorial board.

Then there is this jarring line: "The United States doesn’t have the right to tell a third of humanity to go back to their bicycles because the party’s over."

It’s
just a quick little transition, a throw-away line, probably not
something that anyone put a lot of thought into. And yet this one
sentence highlights a profound set of assumptions about how a city
should be.

It’s a little reminder that a significant segment of
New York City’s decision-making class still views bicycling as
something to be done by children, Lance Armstrong and impoverished
people in Third World countries. Biking isn’t seen as an integral part
of the healthy, sustainable 21st century urban metropolis. Rather, it
is more often perceived as a disruption, an annoyance, and maybe even a
little bit backwards and uncivilized. To the writer of this sentence, a
city filled with bike commuters clearly does not represent progress.

That’s
so different than how I see it. Getting on my bike to drop my son at
day-care, run an errand, or go to a meeting isn’t a sacrifice. It
doesn’t mean "the party’s over." It doesn’t represent some sort of
personal or societal failure. The way I see it, a city filled with bike traffic is the party.

–Aaron Naparstak