Over the past few years, like many people I know, I’ve been gradually trying to reduce my climate footprint. It reduces the sense of futility I feel in the face of the impending disaster, and leads to many interesting conversations with fellow humans.
One of the biggest changes I’ve made is to reduce the amount I fly. I have always worked for global tech companies, which has necessitated a lot of (very enjoyable) international travel. Through work I’ve visited China, Hong Kong, Korea, The Philippines, Mexico, the USA, Rwanda, Malta, Ireland, Switzerland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Israel, Dubai and probably a whole bunch of other places: that’s a lot of carbon dioxide. Then there’s holiday travel, which included flights to Norway, Denmark, Russia, Greece, Canada, the USA, Morocco, Malaysia and Thailand. Coupled with this, my parents live in the north of Scotland, my brother lives in Denmark and a whole bunch of cousins live in Norway. I don’t live in any of these countries, and so visiting my family has burned a lot of the black stuff over the years.
Since I stopped blithely hopping on a plane at any opportunity, long-distance travel now necessitates some careful calculations up front. For work, I limit myself to a couple of conferences per year at most, and will only fly if video conferencing or train travel isn’t possible. For holiday travel I have just stopped flying completely. Neither my husband nor I can stomach buying plane tickets to fly to other countries for our own entertainment any more. I don’t like to think about this too hard, because if I keep up with this policy it means I will probably never get to see Brazil or India or Japan or any of the other countries I have always longed to visit. On the plus side, our holidays are now spent exploring new parts of England or Wales, which is always a pleasure, and we can take our dogs with us everywhere, which we love.
The remaining challenge is flying to see family, and as my brother and his wife plan to move to Canada in the next few years, these calculations will become even harder. This week I am planning a trip to Scotland for my father’s upcoming birthday. At first I thought about taking the sleeper train, which would allow me to travel overnight, maximise my time with my parents and (major plus) take the dogs too! But a bit of digging around online indicated that the emissions per passenger kilometre for sleeper trains aren’t that great (fewer passengers per metre of train, perhaps?) and the cost for two adults and two dogs is pretty eye-watering. The day train comes out pretty well in terms of lower emissions, but means I would lose almost two full days to travel (it’s about 13 hours door to door from my house in Southend to my parents’ house in the Highlands). Driving takes at least as long and there’s no way we are using our hideous diesel car (which we try never to drive and are deciding how to get rid of) that far.
Then it occurred to me that if I travel alone, our total emissions immediately halve (I suppose you could argue that if we share a train carriage or plane or car it makes no difference to the volume of carbon dioxide, but at least with planes and trains we’d be generating half the demand). Does my husband really need to join for my dad’s birthday, or can I go alone? What about if I just don’t go at all? I feel depressed and close the tabs with Skyscanner and emissions comparison charts. What will happen when my brother moves to Canada? Will I fly there once a year and feel sick with guilt? Or will I smugly refuse to do it and force him and his entire family to fly to me instead?
What I would really like to see, and what would make these calculations much simpler, is for the cost of transportation to reflect the volume of CO2 emissions, rather than any other market forces. I know this is not a straightforward matter, given that everything from altitude to electrification of track to passenger density to source of electricity has an impact, but we know enough to know that planes are by and large worse than trains and so why the heck is plane travel still so much cheaper? Why am I, a puny little individual traveller, making these (undoubtedly flawed) calculations and enforcing an emissions quota on myself?
And then I get to wondering what will happen when plane travel does (eventually, surely?!) become more expensive. Will we return to the days when a family member moving overseas was a very big deal, and meant that it could be years and years between seeing each other? Will we plan and save up for one or two long-distance journeys per lifetime, rather than jumping on planes to the other side of the world without a thought? Will I be able to get a relatively fast train from London to Rome one day without destroying my bank balance or losing a week of my life? Somehow, that sounds like a better world to me, regardless of the challenges it puts in our paths.
bookbusbird 