There's no denying the lusty sound of an engine roaring to life unleashes something thrilling, raw, and primeval. As viscerally titillating as it may be, internal combustion sounds more like fingernails raking across a chalkboard these days as fuel prices grow more volatile and climate change skeptics finally admit that we might have a problem here.

Desperation erupts, the reality of global warming sets in and we are grasping at quick fixes. Riding a bike is both literally and figuratively, one of the fastest solutions to curbing climate change - especially in choked, urban environments where getting stuck in traffic costs the US more than $63 billion in lost productivity and wasted fuel each year. 150 million American households already own perfectly decent, working bicycles that languish in storage. They only require a scrub, lube, and maybe a tune-up.

A cyclist who commutes ten miles will spare the air 1⁄2 pound of carbon monoxide emissions and save roughly $7.50 per trip. Heart-stopping fuel prices have certainly helped put more bikes on the road and cities are slowly catching up to the trend by implementing bike lanes and encouraging biking instead of driving through various initiatives backed by mayors' offices across North America. More cyclists tend to capture the attention of policy-makers. Just showing up for a morning commute gets hard for voters to ignore, especially when the number of cyclists escalates.

Riding a bike sends an urgent message that cannot be stressed enough: you can effect change just by ditching your car keys and choosing the bike instead. By commuting by bike for trips less than two miles, it's possible to shrink your carbon footprint, save money, improve your productivity, and reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke by 50 percent. Biking is also faster and parking is generally free in most cities.

The bicycle has changed little in design since it was introduced roughly 135 years ago. In that same time, the environment has evolved at an alarming rate; now it has started to exact a price for squandering its resources. A hot planet and an obese citizenry will cost us our future. Choosing the bike now pays dividends to us all.

At 23, Wendy Booher rode her bike across the US from San Francisco to Vermont to examine alternative methods of transportation as part of her undergrad thesis. She currently lives in Somerville, Mass. and is a freelance writer who covers cycling for mainstream media outlets.