Bicycles and Horses

As a child in rural Ireland in the mid 1960s I can still remember a society and economy that was not fully integrated into the global oil economy. Only the wealthy and professionals owned cars. Poorer households did not have a car and the bicycle was still a very important form of mass transit. Many smaller farmers did not own a tractor and draught animals were still common. I also remember a few people were still using handcarts and wheelbarrows to carry cargo on the roads.

The Horse - beautiful but expensive

No one used horses as personal transport. Those without cars used bicycles, small motor bikes or they walked. Apart from the fox hunting horses of the rich and the gentry, there were heavy draught horses and they were used exclusively to haul heavy loads and do heavy farm work like ploughing and mowing. Asses were used for lighter loads and work like getting turf out of the bog.

Horses particularly hard working heavy draught horses are very expensive. They need a lot of ground for grazing, when working hard, like when plowing they need grain, which required more acres to grow. An old farmer told me the first tractor he bought freed up one third of his land for human food production.

A tractor when not in use can be left unattended and costs nothing. A draught animal needs food and attention 365 days a years. They are prone to health problems and can be difficult to get into foal, this all takes time. They need a lot of land and a lot of labour, and in this way they consume a lot of renewable energy.

The Bicycle - practical and cheap

Compared to a horse a bicycle is cheap in both energy and time. A bicycle can travel a lot further and faster in a day than a horse and will consume less energy doing so. Like a tractor when not in use it has no cost and needs no attention. It is also a lot more energy efficient than walking and a human can carry a lot more cargo on a bicycle than on foot. Humans are unlikely to give up the bicycle, for walking or riding a horse over distances.

A neighbour who is an expert horse trainer and breeder told me his father, who was also a horseman, would go long journeys to horse fairs in the 1950s to buy good draught horses he could sell close to home at a profit. He did not go on a horse, nor did he walk, or take the train, he rode a bicycle. If he bought a horse, it walked  home beside the bicycle, even poorer Irish horse farmer in the 1950s travelled by bicycle not by horse.

Even when fossil fuels are all gone in some distant future, steel could be made in solar furnaces and water turbines could power machine tools and all those scrap cars will provide lots of metal to recycle for making bicycles. People may end up riding heavy steel bikes on gravel or dirt paths in the future as they do today in rural Africa.