I cycle primarily for my health, and because it’s so much damn fun. Also, in certain countries, you can earn a pretty penny with bike-to-work incentives. In Belgium for instance, I would add 200 euros a month to my salary just by cycling 30 km to work - something I would do anway. Not too shabby! Bike-to-work schemes don’t exist in Finland though, sadly.
But green credentials? Hmm… Don’t even get me started on that.
Sure cycling superficially looks greener than using a car. But if you consider what energy source a bicycle runs on (food), the abysmal conversion efficiency of food as a mechanical energy source, that food is essentially edible fossil fuel when it comes from modern agricultural processes, then cycling doesn’t look so great. And I’m not even counting the environmental impact of food packaging and shipping it to the local supermarket.
I did the maths years ago, and the end result was that I may as well commute with a small car, it wouldn’t be terribly worse as far as the environment is concerned.
Even when cycling is better for the environment (very short commutes in densely populated urban areas), one’s carbon footprint is also made up of many other things - such as heating one’s home, one’s electricity usage, etc. An individual would have to live in a cave without any modern amenities and scavenge food in the forest to truly call themselves green.
As for electric cars, they’re really, REALLY not eco-friendly. They just happen to shift pollution outside of city centers, is all.