This is ridiculous. If petroleum were used solely to produce bicycle tires and things like seals for appliances, the world would be unimaginably 'greener'.
That entire list is just disingenuous, defeatist nonsense.
Sure, manufacturing a bike takes some energy, but there's huge value in people using e-bikes to get everywhere.
Walking is more sustainable.
I put ~1,000 kilometers on my electric bike last year, which is a net savings of ~40,000 kcals. That's not an insignificant amount of energy saved per year. And many of those trips I had a passenger, a load of cargo (like plants from the nursery, soil, clothing, groceries, etc.) that was too large for me to carry.
So, while an infrequently used bike is probably a loss, sustainability-wise, there must exist a break even point. 40,000 kcals is not nothing. It's not huge, but it's not nothing.
And compared to owning a car? A car might be 500-1000 kcals/kilometer or more. Doing the same math with a car (1,000kms) is like, 500,000-1,000,000 kcals for a small car , 50,000 for walking, and 10,000 for electric biking. No matter what, the savings of walking or biking are monumental compared to a car.
And if we really, really had to we could find ways to dramatically reduce manufacturing, transport, and packaging costs for electric bikes.
Get the best minds in the world together and ask for an action plan for salvaging climate within two generations...100% chance it will be some variation of "live like its 1880"
See how useless that argument is?