Ideas - Why winter does not justify ditching your bike for driving

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

IDEAS producer Tom Howell recently sold his car and joined the ranks of winter cyclists in Montreal. He is not the only one who commutes on bike in North America’s snowiest metropolis. The city’s bike-sharing program operates year-round. The bicycle’s popularity as a winter vehicle is increasing. Nevertheless, winter bicycling remains a minority practice, often viewed as folly. Howell investigates whether there is indeed wisdom in it.

This program is brought to you in part by Specsavers. Every day, your eyes go through a lot. Squinting at screens, driving into the bright sun, reading in dim light, even late-night drives. That's why regular eye exams are so important. At Specsavers, every standard eye exam includes an advanced OCT 3D eye scan, technology that helps independent optometrists detect eye and health conditions at their earliest stages. Take care of your eyes. Book your eye exam at Specsavers today from just $99, including an OCT scan.

Book at Spexsavers.ca.cavers.captorists. Prices may vary by location. Visit Spexavers.cavers.cai to learn more. This is a CBC podcast. We can mention it's really cold today. I think minus 20, but the feel might be much more than that. Welcome to ideas. I'm Nala Ayat. I carry with me these hot pox, little baggies for emergency because my hands get really cold. and they're always in my pocket and I just open them whenever I feel cold and one, today I have one.

Yeah, let's go this one. Just for a little bit and then we'll go up, Clark. The bike lane is clear today. Ana Ziza lives near McGill University in Montreal. To get around town, she bicycles all year round, even in winter. We're going to go up here. Usually I don't take my bike right after a snowstorm. Otherwise, it's quite a workout.

It feels like a motocross. Like right now, actually. Ah, merci. So sometimes I need to take a little bit of the room from the cars. Anna doesn't consider this activity to be strange or especially uncomfortable or even dangerous. I don't find it particularly dangerous if you... Stay on bike lanes. Here we're crossing a pile of snow. Yes, I have studs on my tires. I think it makes me feel more confident than my bike. For sure.

The Montreal neighborhood, known as the plateau, has more protected bike lanes than any area its size in North America. I grew up in Mexico. Cycling wasn't really a way of commuting. in the place where I lived were very car dependent not even I couldn't really walk to places so for me coming to Montreal

it's actually one of the parts that I value the most of living in this city is that I can feel so free biking places walking places feeling safe I didn't have that growing up in Mexico it was always

my mom would feel very anxious around security and Yeah, that's something that I don't take for granted here. And yeah, I love it. I joke with my friends that I've been able to save so much money because I don't own a car and because I don't have to buy a monthly pass. Definitely a big saver. I think my mom only realized until recently that I back in winter.

My sister was telling her, because they live back in Mexico. And so my sister was like, no, I think I'm not. Anna, she bikes in winter. And I was like, no, no, I don't think so, no way. In the summer, about a quarter of the journeys that start in the plateau, start on a bicycle. In the winter, not so much. And Anna does not try to argue her friends into joining her. I guess my approach is not so much to convince them, but to motivate them.

I like to approach the argument by saying that it's not that her core, right? That's just about having the right gear. My boss, who was 60 years old, did it, so younger people could do it. I don't know if I've turned people, but I think I've made people realize that it's not that hardcore, I guess. Among the ranks of winter cyclists, some believe a great untapped potential exists here, that the reliance on automobiles in North American cities rests on a false notion, a sense that physical realities force us to need so many cars. I tend to not want to mess with the laws of physics.

Not on this temperature of winter with snow. Impossible. It seems like Canadians have a mental block around biking in the winter, where they just assume it's impossible. Without having tried it. That does not sound like fun. I think you're still with us you have not even... It's not that you've tried it and got cold.

You just haven't tried, right? Well, not on the road, because there's also a factor of the slush. Sack up, Canadians. This is Canada. Like, look at a mess. maple syrup can. The modern maple syrup can would be people riding bikes in winter, you know. All right. I'm ready to sign up and be a communist. Ideas producer Tom Howell recently sold his car and joined the ranks of winter cyclists.

With the fervor of the newly converted, Tom is asking others to justify logically why they don't do the same, given Canada's international commitments to reduce our carbon emissions as quick as possible. What is wrong with trying to argue people into suffering? That doesn't work particularly. That'd be a start, right? Tom's documentary aims to draw a link between the long-term future for humankind

and day-to-day decisions of individuals trying to do their best without making themselves very uncomfortable. We're calling this episode, must we now bicycle on the snow? I decided that I was going to bike every single day of the winter. Wow. Didn't have to be long, but I had to get out every single day.

Patrick Murphy, co-host of a YouTube channel called Oh, the Urbanity. To get a representative sense of what it's like. Were there any days where you felt like this is really stupid that I'm out here? Yeah, there was maybe about a half dozen days where for the roots that I took, biking really just didn't make sense. Six days, though? Yeah. In Montreal?

Yep. Patrick and I both live in Montreal, but until recently, he was the only one out of the two of us who thought you could safely bicycle in the snow. Winter kind of is a stress test of the bike network. Patrick's 110,000 YouTube subscribers come to him for video essays about urban design, and sometimes for an argument,

One of his most popular videos is called Why Bike Lane Haters are wrong about winter. Living here, you really have the credibility because most places in North America don't get this much snow. They don't get as cold. Montreal is the coldest and snowiest large city in North America. If we can do it here. Yeah, exactly. Patrick grew up in rural Nova Scotia, getting from place to place back then meant taking the car. A lot of my interest in this stuff comes from moving to the city and being fascinated

by the fact that you can take transit places, you can walk places. And I think growing up in a rural environment where it's not possible most of the time makes you appreciate what's special about cities. I'm going to sound judgy here, but this is a decent, cold, snowy day. I'm going to say 80% of people could handle this level of discomfort. Yes. It's perfectly pleasant. My toes are getting a bit cold, I'll admit. Yeah, same here.

If it were true that 80% of Montreal citizens could handle the discomfort and displeasure of bicycling in the snow, that would help justify building much more permanent year-round bicycle infrastructure in the city. And the virtuous cycle here is that the more permanent year-round bicycle infrastructure you build, the less the discomfort and the displeasure. We're on right now Belchast, which is an express bike corridor, kind of a bicycle highway in a sense. And if you are going to work or daycare, school, wherever,

on a route like this in Montreal, you're going to have a pretty good time in the winter. Who in Canada needs to drive a car? Like, could we get it down to zero? No one driving a car. I'm assuming the answer to this is no, but that... Well, it's basically a science fiction question to me. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I don't really know what that would look like.

From my perspective, we in North America should be looking to the countries, the cities that are quite strong on cycling, transit, walkability. In the case of cycling, that's Denmark and the Netherlands, and they still have cars. Hey, you want to run this red light? No one's around. Sure. A few quick figures here for comparison. These are from a World Health Organization report published in 2022 and from the City Transit Data website from the International Association of Public Transport.

So Montreal, seen by some as North America's mecca for urban bicycling, 75% of journeys within city limits are in cars or trucks, usually cars, usually one able-bodied person driving alone. Paris, France, 20% for the same line, item. No small difference. Helsinki, 25%, Berlin and Copenhagen, 30%. Hong Kong, different statistic now. This is Sustainable Modes share, essentially anything other than oil-powered private cars. Hong Kong's is at 90%. Singapore, 70%, Oslo, 70%, Montreal, 30%. If Montrealers want to look down on someone, Los Angeles, 10%. For the record, Patrick Murphy doesn't

think the way forward involves berating North Americans until they shape up. I personally don't think about it in terms of judging individual people. Oh, you're not, I said, Naya. No, but I think I'm concerned with what people support politically. I do think we need to be ambitious and aggressive in terms of taking space and securing safe options for pedestrians and cyclists. I don't think we should hold back on that. But when it comes to judging people individually for their choices,

I think that's less useful, less warranted in general. But they're choosing to drive within the context that makes driving easier for most trips. I think we should implement policies to change people's behaviors. Yeah. To give people more options. Yeah. But I don't think it's that useful to judge them personally.

A problem may arise when implementing policies to change people's behaviors, especially when the quote-unquote bad behavior is that of the majority. You need those same people to support the policies, the same ones you're hoping will be changed by them. To put this bluntly, if someone doesn't already feel like bicycling in the snow, are they going to support a government promising to make them want to do it? Or would they be more likely to say, stop this wretched war on the car.

Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the War on Cars. I'm Sarah Goodyear. I'm Doug Gordon, and I'm one of the co-hosts of the War on Cars. And I'm the other co-host of the War on Cars. And your book? It's called Life After Cars, Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile. Sarah and Doug are New Yorkers.

With their podcast and now their book, they encourage North Americans to want to change. We had a mayor in Toronto when I was living there called Rob Ford, who made that one of his big campaign slogans to end the war on the car. This again is another example of the war on the car. What's going on in choosing that title for your podcast? Well, we were directly influenced by Rob Ford and his use of that. You know, it's a good way like all social movements of reclaiming something that the opposition uses and says about you. Any poke at the status quo turns into a right? And that's really all we're doing. We're not saying banish all cars, but whether you're repurposing one parking space to turn it into bicycle parking or a bike share station, or you're saying,

let's eliminate a thousand parking spaces to put it in a new bus line. Someone is going to accuse you of waging a war on cars. Can we win a war on cars? We are winning in a lot of places, I think. You know, I think it's kind of two steps forward, one step back, and in some places like Ontario, it might feel like it's two steps forward and ten steps back, given the current premiere and his attack on bike lanes. When we both started doing the podcast, and certainly when I started doing advocacy and when Sarah got into this as a beat, as a journalist, it didn't feel like we were ever going to win the war on cars. But, you know, now we have a book. We have more media covering the subject. We have elected officials who know it's a winning issue for them, such as Zerun Mamdani

in New York City, running on fast and free buses. Yeah, I would agree that certainly since I've started covering these issues over the last 20 years, there's been a dramatic shift. When we started the podcast, I would go to a party or something, meet people I didn't know, and they'd say, well, what do you do? I'd have a podcast, and they'd say, well, what's it called? And I would say, the war on cars. And sometimes it was just really, they would really be like, what are you talking about? Really, could be unpleasant about it. Now they want to know more. They're not on the attack about it and they're not on the defensive about it so much as they are just plain curious. Like, well, what do you mean by that?

And then when I say it's about making a world in which people are prioritized over automobiles and making cities that are good for human beings to live in, they get it. And I think more and more people do. So it's been a big change. And then in my own city, New York, you know, it's gone from being no bike. lanes, very little organized advocacy, to now the advocates are in the halls of power. Who wins if we win the war on cars? Everybody wins if we win the war on cars. You know, there's this us versus them mentality, and I will have to admit that with the title of the war on cars, it can feel like we're

telling drivers, you know, we don't care about you. But if you look at the places where cycling and public transportation are the most robust, those often happen to be the places where drivers are often the most satisfied. You look at public polling in the Netherlands, and they have some of the most satisfied drivers in the developed world. And that is because if you have to drive in such a place, you have a mobility issue, you're carrying a load that can't be transported on public transit or via bicycle, or it's just the best tool for the job at that moment, chances are you are not stuck in traffic behind hundreds or thousands of other people who are making very short trips that they could otherwise make, such as to the grocery store just to get some eggs or to take a child to school, that they might otherwise be able to do on public transit or cycling. What's your ballpark? How many of these people that I see in a car when I'm out biking? How many of them need to be there?

Oh, gosh. I mean, how many of them need to be there versus how many of them could be somewhere else if we had better modes? That's a tough question to answer. Right now, because of the way that we've developed so much of our infrastructure, most people don't have much of a choice. Most cars are single occupancy, right? You know, they're lucky if they're carrying two people. Most people drive solo to work. Most trips in the United States are three miles or less. It's a distance that could easily be covered by a bicycle, especially an electric bike, if the infrastructure made it comfortable for people to make that choice. Comfort is a big thing, isn't it? Right, comfort. It's not just about safety. It's about how far is it as their parking on your destination, a place to store your bike?

In the process of making people more comfortable, Sarah Goodyear sees important political potential as well. There's a union of delivery riders that has really become a political force here in the city that is making common cause with more traditional transportation advocacy community. And our delivery riders here in New York City are almost all either Latino, Chinese, or South Asian. That, I think, is a place where we can start to build coalitions. I think that at its core, it's about human decency and human relationship and making cities into places where people can comfortably do the things that they do in cities. They can work and play, meet each other, and create. Being in the rooms that we've been in with the advocates and the audiences that we've had,

many of them have said, you know, we came here because we're looking for hope. We're looking for solidarity. And that's a great thing about this movement. It offers that. It offers a way to fight for the place that you love every city we've been to, including Houston, Texas, which is the belly of the beast as far as cars and fossil fuels go. The appetite that the advocacy community there has to fight these fights and to make their city better, whist one of the most inspiring things I've ever seen. Just out of curiosity, are either of you winter cyclists as well, or do you tend to walk around and use transit in the snow? I'm mostly a pedestrian and transit user. My only rule with winter cycling is temperature I can deal with. You can always put on another layer. That's fine.

If the roads aren't clear, if the bike lanes are icy, I tend to not want to mess with the laws of physics, and I don't really want to slip and get hurt. but I'll bike no matter what the temperature is. It's usually sometimes faster, obviously, than walking, and so you're exposed to the elements a little less than you might walking. Especially if your brakes freeze. Oh, yes, I've had that experience.

But, yeah, I mean, the thing is that in New York, bike infrastructure and indeed the pedestrian infrastructure is very, very poorly maintained during winter. And I just had to go somewhere, and I thought about biking. And I said, oh, I'm not going to bike because I see the mounds. of the ridges of ice all over the place. So I'm not going to do it. And then I was caught on a sidewalk that hadn't been cleared and that was covered in ice and was really dangerous. And I had to just creep along on the sidewalk. So clearing the infrastructure that there is for pedestrians and cyclists

and paying as much attention to that as we do to clearing infrastructure for drivers, that would go a long way toward mode shift. I have been met occasionally with the allegation. that my concern over whether bicycling in the snow is silly or wise might be a relatively small question. And so I retort by insisting it is related to the great global issues such as what temperature will be like it to be in the year of 2018. If we are to succeed at some sort of life after cars, we don't have that much time depending on, I suppose, what you want the world to be like. You could say you want the world to be six degrees hotter, in which case you get all the time you need. But if you want it to be only 2.5 degrees hotter than pre-industrial levels, when does this life after cars need to kick in?

Well, now, it needs to kick in now. The beautiful thing about bicycle infrastructure is it's very inexpensive to install and maintain, and it can be deployed rapidly. You know, you have cities like Seville in Spain that installed hundreds of kilometers of bicycle lanes in the span of mere months and saw bicycling rates go up by huge amounts. You know, you can drop some plastic cones and paint on the side of a road and you have a bike lane. You can close streets to cars. Montreal has a lot of experience with that, with many of its nice pedestrian-friendly streets.

These are all really inexpensive and quick things to do. You know, we're not going to tear down highways overnight. That's going to take a very long time to adjust to that. But in terms of what we can build in neighborhoods to enable people to move there or who already live there and say, you know what, I don't need a car for most of my daily trips. That can be done extremely quickly. If we're so right, why is everyone else so wrong? You know, I think that the status quo is a really powerful thing. We have talked on our podcast and we talk in the book about the concept of modonormativity, the idea that because people, all they,

they've ever known is an autocentric world, they assume that that is the way things have to be, and that's what's normal. You know, those are powerful forces to overcome. I do think that there are a lot of things that we have on our side, and I wonder sometimes if the current round of backlash against bike lanes is sort of a rearguard action of a dying system that is using bike lanes as an easy way to foment culture war saying, no, no, no, we have to cling to the status quo. And bike lanes are just an easy target when you're defending the status quo. There's something that make people feel anxious. And I would say it's sort of in the same way, perhaps, that trans rights and before that

gay rights were seen, you know, is something that's just so threatening to what is, quote, unquote, normal that there's a lot of anxiety about it. And so I think bikes get targeted that way, and that's really unfortunate. And unfortunately, I think transit even in North America gets targeted that way because it's so often perceived to be the transportation used by disadvantaged people, people who don't have any choice in their transportation. And I do want to elevate transit in this conversation as well because we're never going to solve these problems. We're never going to get people out of their cars. if we don't provide fast, frequent, affordable public transit. With snacks.

With snacks. Snacks are to show that we care. Like when you go to an important party, like a business party, people bring you snacks just for coming to the party. Like you didn't do anything. Well, okay, I'm all in favor of snacks on transit, but I mostly want it to be frequent and to be useful. Anyone who's been to Japan comes away just sort of reeling at the ubiquity of high-quality transit.

It makes a world in which living without a car is not only possible, but desirable and sensible. All right. Doug and Sarah, thank you so much for talking to me. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Tom. Really, really interesting conversation. Interesting indeed. Speaking to Tom there were Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon, co-authors of the book Life After Cars and hosts of the podcast The War on Cars. This is Ideas and an episode called Must We Now Bicycle in the Snow? I'm Nala Ayad.

This program is brought to you in part by Specksavers. Every day, your eyes go through a lot, squinting at screens, driving into the bright, sun, reading in dim light, even late-night drives. That's why regular eye exams are so important. At Specsavers, every standard eye exam includes an advanced OCT 3D eye scan, technology that helps independent optometrists detect eye and health conditions at their earliest stages. Take care of your eyes. Book your eye exam at Specsavers today from just $99, including an OCT scan. Book at Spexsavers.cavers.caps.com.iars.com. Prices may vary by location. Visit Spexsavers.cavers.ca to learn more. podcast focus on just one story. But right now, you probably need more. On Up First from NPR, we bring you three

of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes, because no one's story can capture all that's happening in this big, crazy world of ours on any given morning. Listen now to the Up First podcast from NPR. When I first got to Amsterdam, I wore a bike helmet. Michelle Ernsting is a former Montrealer. She now lives in the capital city of the Netherlands. I put bike helmets on my children's heads because they were babies and they were sitting on my bike when I was cycling around. A woman who was mother at a school where my children were going to, her child said, Mum, why are they wearing bike helmets? And the mother said it's because they're foreigners. Amsterdamers are world famous for their bicycling. The Knowledge Institute for Mobility Policy

estimates nearly half of trips taken in town are by bike. That's double the trips taken using personal automobiles. For comparison, Victoria, British Columbia, leads all of North America in bicycle mode share, the portion of trips taken by a particular type of transport. And even there, bikes make up just 13 and a half percent of city traffic. Terrain, temperature, history, city architecture. They all play a role in how people choose to get around. But Michelle points to another reason why so many in Amsterdam feel most comfortable on a bike, it's the rules. There is nowhere in Amsterdam you can go over 30 kilometers an hour anymore. You know, as a car driver, you have to be so careful. Cars are, no matter, even if they're doing all the right thing, a bike comes straight at

them, they are 50% liable. And in the case of an under 14-year-old, there are, 100% liable. Whatever happens, you are the one who got it wrong, even if you got it totally right and did your best. I kind of feel like if I look at people who have a car, they're resigned to the fact that they've lost the war. The power dynamics completely flipped. As a cyclist, you own the road. As a cyclist, you are the one who is entitled to be there. And in fact, there's a whole set of the main thoroughfares in the city that have just been repaved and redesigned, let's say to be bike streets. And it says on the street when you're cycling along, this is a bike street, and then it also

says underneath the car is the guest. You can cycle on that street knowing that this is my street and you can have somebody cycling beside you and a car might be driving behind you and you don't have to get out of that car's way. You can just keep going at that speed because they're the guest. For the record, this style of city living is something Michelle appreciates. Oh, absolutely recommend. Absolutely.

In fact, she can't imagine any political candidate in Amsterdam would dare run on a platform of reviewing bicycle infrastructure with a view to removing it. I can't even imagine it. I can't even imagine it. It's unthinkable. Yeah. No, and I can't imagine it because it wouldn't, I don't think it would be in anybody's interest.

Michelle is now so accustomed to Amsterdam. When she comes back to Canada, she finds the cities here so extremely bicycle unfriendly. She refuses to ride. No, I wouldn't bike. It's interesting. When I come back to Montreal, I love walking. I also like the smell of the metros.

It's nostalgic. But would I, would I, I mean, I watch cyclists in Montreal, and I think, wow, you guys have it hard. This is not easy. So, no, I wouldn't do it. I don't think I'd do it. Amsterdam is Amsterdam. It's not winter year.

Nothing to do with Montreal. This is Juliette Trollio. Different street, different, I don't know how to say, arrondissement. Everything is different. And it's in the mentality of these people since years, years and years. And the street is not the same. It's completely different way of living. way of life. Juliet has run a small business in Montreal for 39 years. She explains to ideas producer

Tom Howell why they can't follow Amsterdam's example. Hey, some people stay really far, you know. They have to go work. They have to go, say, a kid and everything. So it's difficult for them to be by bicycle and not on this temperature of winter with snow. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible for anyone. That's it. It's impossible. It's very difficult. You have to be a bicycle man to do a bicycle all year to be able to run bicycle in this winter. Have you tried to bicycle on snow? Never. I will never. You have to be very strong to do bicycle. That's one of the reason I stopped bicycle. Also for the dressing You cannot be dressing fashion

You know You have to be sport fashion Fashion dress But not fashion fashion fashion In bicycle That does not go together No no It's dangerous

A dress, a skirt It's very difficult Maybe not a skirt If the skirt is short enough It's a dress That's the real problem But it's a good show You know

That's the other concern We're good underwear than you. Yeah, a nice one, you know. If you've ever visited Central Amsterdam and strolled through its famous Nine Streets District, you might recognize the type of charming boutique that Juliette Trollio owns. There's a giant button over the door and many more buttons inside. You know, I don't have only button, I buckle, ribbon, lace, and I have also everything to make hats and also interior decoration. And, you know, I have feather.

Many costume people come here, you know. So I'm famous because I'm always there and I'm listening always what the people want. So I help them also. I'm a stillist also in the same time. Juliet's boutique is called Rix Racks. At the corner of two quiet side streets, she opened it there in 1987.

On the Plateau Mont Royal. Why? Because in 1987 it was very cheap. Many artists people was here because the rent was not that expensive. Many little shop, many cute shop, and many vintage shop, and many people from outside was coming to visit us. Many people was shopping.

And then the war on the car. Something stopped when the politics decide they don't want car anymore. So all the people from outside, they stopped to come because there was no parking anymore. Now, just to clarify, there are many, many parked cars near Rick's Rex Racks, But these mostly belong to local residents. They display long-term parking permits.

Juliet hears complaints from old customers living in suburbs and other towns who want to come visit her store by car. They're foxed by the parking restrictions. They hate the one-way streets that change direction at each block trying to funnel cars back towards bigger thoroughfares. You cannot go straight. That's the problem here. That's why the people don't like anymore to come here

because you cannot go straight on one street. you have to turn, to fund a place, to turn, turn, turn, and then after you don't found parking, so the people are, hey, it's too crazy. It's a bit sad, I mean, it's sad because all the rent is more expensive, the stock is more expensive, insurance, everything, telephone, phone, everything, it's more expensive, and all the business have less people. That's why they close. Juliet thinks the rules of the road should not try to dissuade people from driving cars.

a favoritism of car, not favoritist of bicycle. You know, it's half to be a good harmony between all that. So right now, 75% of trips are made by car here. So to me, it seems like it would be more fair if we changed the roads so that it was... So stop the winter, please. Oh, yeah, it's the winter that's the big reason? Oh, yeah, for sure. What is it about the winter that makes it hard to bicycle?

It's not only the winter. It's because everything is far here. everything is far. Some people stay very far. What if four out of five car journeys didn't need to happen because they could just bicycle? I don't have a car. I walk, but I take taxi and you know when you go shopping, me, it's a big problem because I have a bag, too much bag. That's one good thing about a car is you can carry lots of stuff. And when you have a family, you have to shopping, the food and everything.

It's heavy. All these things, it's heavy. So many good reason to have a car. You go supper in a restaurant. You are well-dressed. You have high heels. No, no, no. You don't go by bicycle. I'm sorry. It's not possible.

What if you bring your heels in your pannier? No, no, but I mean, the shawl, the hair, the everything. Worth noting here that every time I've seen Juliet, she looks like a movie star ready to attend the Met Gala. Oh, no, no. No, no. The weather here, it's... No.

I don't know if you hear in my voice that I don't like winter. I believe that I am giving a gesture of kindness to the future because I walk and I bicycle and I gave away my car and I'm going to live in this way because I would rather, in the year 20181, the temperature, global temperature, be two degrees warmer, not five degrees warmer. Did in China they use only electric car? No.

And the industry in China. I mean, it's very cute if in Montreal we don't take care. anymore, but if in China they continue to polluate or in state or everywhere in the world, I mean, I agree of everything what you say. I know all this, you know, but, I mean, we have to be realist, too. Be Realistic is a common rejoinder to exciting new proposals. Whether it's a useful rejoinder is another matter. For instance, if the snowiest metropolis in North America actually

did manage to abandon its 75% reliance on automobiles, and four out of five cars disappeared from the streets, and bicycles became the most common form of personal transport in wintertime. It might be realistic to imagine the effect of this on other North American cities would go well beyond shrugging their shoulders and commenting on our extreme cuteness. What really is realistic here, up to in including the long-term scenarios that begin in 2021 is exactly the question society has yet to resolve. I am Jia Ying Zhao. Please call me Jay-Z.

I'm a professor of psychology and sustainability at the University of British Columbia. Jay-Z is committed to being realistic, especially regarding what motivates behavior change. So I teach a course on environmental psychology. My students typically are concerned about environmental issues like climate change, and they take the course to find out how they can help. She also has a book coming out. The title is called Leave the Lights on, How Joyful Decisions Can Save Our Species. It's focused on joy.

The book is essentially advocating for actions that not only reduce carbon emissions, but also increase human happiness. We talked extensively about biking in the book. And how did you get to the studio today in Vancouver? I walked. Aha. Do you ever bicycle? I do, but not often in the rain in Vancouver.

Oh, yeah. Vancouver's problem is rain. Here we have snow in Montreal. Which is even worse, in my opinion. Great. So, yeah, so ideas is a storytelling show. I did one recently on finding out sort of what the arguments were, what the logic was that might go into deciding you wanted an extra pipeline these days. I fill Jay-ZN on the story so far, including how I myself recently discovered climate change. change. I am now having read all 36 pages of the summary for policymakers from the IPCC, I have come away from it deciding that of the five scenarios they depict for the end of this century, I would like the second scenario, scenario B, and I'm working out what that means. Do you know about these scenarios that the IPCC has in its report? Are they something that...

Yep, it's pretty depressing. Yeah. Do you know which? scenario you personally are hoping we end up at? No, because there's no U-Us in my own, you know, projections. I'm just trying to do what I can. I'm trying to get others to act as well. So I'm focusing on what I can do. Right, right, right. Sorry, you said there's no what in your projections? I don't think, I'm not an expert in, you know, climate modeling. So I don't think my opinion on climate models is that useful. And to be honest, if I look at the data too much, I get even more depressed. rest. So I try to focus on what I can do and what brings me joy so I can keep going.

So, okay. So you don't need to pick a scenario for the future in order to keep doing that. I'm not going to. Yeah, fair enough. So when you emailed me about, you know, what you did, which is heroic, in my opinion, you gave up your car, then you're biking in the snow in subzero temperatures in Montreal. Now that sounds like something that extreme sport enthusiast would do and does not sound like something that most people will want to do. So I'm just curious, first of all, what made you give up your car and bike in this extreme weather and what kept you going?

So far, it's been relatively pleasant. Also, I would say the process of bicycling around causes the meaning of a car to change because when you're inside a car, it's very comfortable and quite nice. I mean, you might be irritated at something that's going on outside, but the physical experience of sitting in a comfortable seat that's warm is perfectly pleasant. But when you spend a lot of time near cars from the outside, they become something that's quite unpleasant. And so I decided I didn't want to, I guess, participate so much

in inflicting that on my neighbors and fellow citizens. Yeah. Yeah, so you found pleasure or meaning, being biking in the snow. I mean, has you convinced anybody to do this? My wife got on briefly. And she stopped. She admitted, she expected it to be slippery, and it wasn't, because we were using the bike shares here that have winter tires, so they don't slip.

And she was noting that when you're in a bike lane, if it's plowed, everything's fine. it only becomes unpleasant when you are trying to share a road with cars. And unfortunately, you do have to do that quite often still in Montreal. So that was the part that made her think I don't want to do this. Right. So that's also why most people try and vegan or vegetarian diet give up. You know, 85% people give up on a vegan diet because, one, it's probably not as tasting as meat dishes. And two, sometimes it's harder to get.

It's one thing to get them to start changing their behavior. They can try it once or twice, but it's a whole different ballgame to get them to keep going. If you have to do this often, sometimes in unpleasant conditions, I think this is when people give up. Asking people to change their behavior because of climate change is not very effective. This is widely held to be true in behavioral science today. People report giving up new climate-friendly behaviors because they find them inconvenient, uncomfortable, and above all, fruitless. How is my biking one day or two days of the week going to change anything?

A more effective approach, it's currently felt, is to offer a proverbial carrot. In other words, give people what they want. For example, a bike bus. Good morning, bike bus! Let's go to school! So this is not a real bus. It's essentially a crowd of children. and some adults, parents, biking with these kids to go to and go from school. That's a huge movement.

Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. The reason it's picking up speed right now globally is it's fun. You will see essentially an ocean of kids biking on the streets, taking over streets, neighborhoods to go to school, and people say it's like biking in an ocean of joy. If I'm driving behind this back in the days when I was driving more, and I want to get somewhere and all these kids are in the way, what would you think would go into my mind when I think,

am I going to, like, honk the horn right now, you know? No, no, why would you? Because if you see a bike bus on the street, it tells you you are on the wrong road, you should drive somewhere else. No honking. Oh, of course, no honking. It's just, it's wrong. The other day, I was honked at.

when I had to ride on a snowy street in one of the car tire tracks. Perhaps it was a honk of encouragement, but I suspected it was a honk of get out of my way. Jaying, or Jay-Z, says the big difference at play here is not just that kids are cuter. If you're the only biker on the street, biking in the car lane, of course, the cars are going to get pissed off and honk at you.

Well, here we arrive at, if you'll forgive the pun, a bit of a vicious cycle, because I want to bicycle up to a point, and at a certain point I don't want to anymore. And if someone's honking at me and I'm feeling uncomfortable, I'm going to maybe get tipped back into driving instead of biking. But the thing that, as you point out, the real sort of variable there is whether I'm alone or whether other people are doing this as well. On the other hand, each of those people also doesn't want to go out and get honked at. This is a bit of a problem, isn't it? Yeah.

I mean, you need to reach a social tipping point. Biking is more of a thing in Asia. I grew up in Asia. I biked all my childhood. There are protected huge lanes for biking on pretty much every road. So it's easy to bike. It's also the norm to bike because driving is more expensive and it's slower. Did you have winter where you were?

Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. We have, you know, sub-zero temperatures. What happened? I bike. I bike with my mom. I gear it up. I was covered in hats and gloves and face masks.

I still biked because that was the norm. Hmm. But we don't have that norm in North America, primarily because I think the biggest barrier is infrastructure. Talking of vicious cycles. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the war on cars. Let's eliminate a thousand parking spaces. Someone is going to accuse you of waging a war on cars. People who drive a car don't want to not be able to park it.

And yet we somehow want this to be a popular policy. Do you have any research that comes to mind or studies that can help get people to want to want to not be able to park their car? As you discourage driving, you have to promote the better alternative. Shying Jail's realistic approach to behavior change is exactly what urban activists would look for as they attempt to persuade the general public. But this is not exactly the same as I'm. answering a question like, must we now bicycle in the snow? Or even, so I appear to have talked myself into bicycling in the snow, have I made a mistake? That's not a question of marketing strategies. It's a question of logic. Person D may find activity X tolerable or intolerable. All members

of Team Scenario B want person D to find activity X tolerable. If conditions are R, then person D will find activity X tolerable. If not R, then person D will find activity X intolerable. Therefore, all members of Team Scenario B want conditions to be R. How am I doing so far? Um, well, fine, I guess. This is Anthony Weston. I am the author of a number of books in philosophy, but one of them, the first one is called a rulebook for arguments. Which happens to be the book I had to study back when I was taking introductory courses on logic 30 years ago. At the time, the book was in its second edition. The sixth edition is currently being proofread before release. It's a book of very simple rules for critical thinking. It was framed as, it is framed as a set of rules for doing it

better, doing it well. It's kind of a back pocket book, too. It's small and short and to the point. And I think it can legitimately claim to be a classic at this point. Well, a lot of copies in print, several hundred thousand at least, and multiple editions, and it turns up, you know, one thing about being an author is you don't really know what happens to your books, generally speaking, when you put them out there, they just kind of go off in the ether and you don't know. But this one keeps coming back in different ways, for example, their radio hosts in Canada who turned out to have encountered it like how long ago was that, 20, 30 years ago?

So, you know, that's really wonderful from my point of view. And so I do feel like it's gotten out there and made some kind of different. I ask Anthony what he thinks I should be on the lookout for when I'm trying to make an argument in favor of people bicycling in the snow. Well, commonsensically, it's not very appealing, right? It's cold, it's slippery. So I imagine they're disincentives, for sure. I suppose you could describe all those as forms of sort of danger and suffering that someone would weigh up against any advantages. Yeah, that's fair. Do you still have my email that I sent to you? I do.

Would you mind actually being the one who reads out my little bits of attempted logic? You can maybe let me know if you think I'm going wildly off track somewhere. Okay, let me start and see if this, I think the printout wasn't entirely complete. But if I want to do X under conditions P, that stuff? Yeah, yeah. Okay. If I want to do X under conditions P, but not under conditions Q, and I want to want to do X, but conditions are Q, then I want conditions to be P.

What I'm puzzled by is kind of the psychological tangle on most of it, like so wanting to want something. For me, at least, it's a little too far into my head. I would like people, it's not what I want. Well, I mean, I wouldn't mind it. Okay, I'm committed to and hoping that we can limit climate change and warming and all. There are all sorts of measures we can take for that, including individual activities like giving it one's car and biking in the snow. I would love people to do that, among other things, sure. And maybe some of the other things are more effective and satisfying and long-term change-ish.

But certainly it's all things being equal, holding things steady, biking in the snow is better than driving in the snow or whatever, for sure. And I suppose other things being equal, I would prefer that people want to do that rather than not want to do that. But really, I just want them to do it. I see. I suppose I got to that because I was thinking, if my desire is that we get to scenario B, and my problem is that people don't want to bicycle around in the snow.

And I think that if we got out of cars and onto bicycles, this would be part of getting towards an R.O.B., then the stumbling block I'm on is that people don't want to do it. Right. So the question is, now what are we going to do about that? But for me, I think changing the lens is probably more both practical and promising. So creating covered bikeways, let's say. So instead of biking in snow and ice, basically there's not snow and ice where you're So you also have to make probably locations closer to each other so that people don't have to bike as far.

Make locations closer to each other. I mean, I'm not sure we can do that. That's just the law. Oh, I see what you're saying. Just sort of make sure your grocery store is closer, the kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don't mean like moving the supermarket. Bring Quebec a bit closer to Montreal, for instance.

Well, even that is kind of interesting. You could think about the facility could come to them in the sense that could be deliveries. And so people could order, we're capable of doing that during COVID. A lot of people did that. Do you happen to have in that printout of the email, do you have the one that begins Team Scenario B? Okay. Team Scenario B consists of people who want scenario B to be attainable.

Scenario B is attainable if members of Team Scenario B do things they currently do not want to do. Therefore, Team Scenario B wants members of Team Scenario B to do things they currently do not want to do. But it is interesting that the do-do-do-do-do-do. I'm not, you know, other people might not. be so focused on this particular point. But for me, I'm more interested in what people do than what they want to do, affecting what people do. Wanting, well, want is a tricky word, too. That's another thing. So you could say, well, people want. One is a desire, right, on some level. So that one thing is, I'm really attracted to this X, whatever it is. I want to do X.

Well, suppose I do something else. Suppose I do Y. You could say, well, in a certain sense of want, I must have wanted to do Y if I did Y. But that doesn't mean that actually, desire to do why. It's a different meaning. So that's a, in the logical language, in equivocation, you're using the same word in two different senses. Equivocation is still against the rules in the rule book for argument? It certainly is. Because you're just, you know, you're basically, if you more carefully define the word that you're equivocating on, the premises don't imply the conclusion or even relate to each other. They're just talking about different things. Weasel words, same as if equivocation?

Yeah, weasel word, it is, but it's a little bit more equivocation you can kind of happen into innocently. And we're probably being manipulated. Well, I don't mind manipulating people, as long as they end up wanting to want. I don't want you to want to manipulate people. My fiendish arguments haven't yet trapped Anthony into proving to himself that he wants to bicycle in the snow. But an interesting side effect is occurring. It turns out, now we're talking about it. perhaps he does want to.

You've made me think, hmm, I wonder about biking in the snow. I think I would prefer three wheels to two, but other than that, I'm ready to go. That might be part of conditions being P, is having three wheels. It's not a bicycle anymore. Right, but, you know,

the idea of self-powered transport that is way smaller than cars that is not technologically that complex. I just need to maybe expand my definition of bicycle if I want more people to join in. Or there's just other vehicles, whatever, yeah. Yeah. Well, Anthony, thank you very much for your guidance. Thank you, sir. I appreciate talking to you, and good luck with the Vikings.

Thank you for bearing the future in mind in that way. Desire, like temperature, is a matter of degrees. You can want a particular state of affairs 55 years from now, but not want it enough to make yourself uncomfortable in the short term. The good news is, desires can go up as well as down, and there's no obvious speed limit on how fast this happens. In a time when many of us maybe look at long-term futures with despair, perhaps it is encouraging to notice how much of what's really realistic does still depend, for the time being, on what we want to happen and how much we want it. And that's how Tom Howell handles the question of,

must we now bicycle in the snow? Lisa Ayuso is the web producer for ideas. Technical production, Sam McNulty. Senior producer Nicola Luxchich. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.