Trips to make your friends green

Travel site sends out eco-themed newsletter

Posted by Sarah van Schagen at 1:01 PM on 31 Aug 2007

Read more about: green living | travel

You know when you're searching for airline tickets and you get that feeling that there might be a cheaper flight somewhere if you just check one more discount-airfare website? Yeah, I hate that. Which is why I like using Kayak.com, an aggregator that finds the prices at a number of different discount sites as well as on the airline's own site.

The reason I mention this is because they also send out an email newsletter with various travel deals, and this week, there's a green theme, with information about eco-volunteer work, bike tours, and interesting wildlife. (I know, I know ... "green theme" and "travel deals" in the same sentence -- it's high treason, I tell you! All travel is bad, blah, blah, blah.)

This is how the newsletter frames it:

Al Gore may have scared you into switching to fluorescent bulbs and a new hybrid, but we want to put the eco friendly fun back into your next vacation. This issue is all about sustainable travel. So get your carbon footprint down to size on one of these fabulously green locations.

For story: Trips to make your friends green
9 Comments | Post a Comment

denial

a fully laden A380 jet is, in terms of energy, is like a 9-mile queue of traffic on the road below

see http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/6/13/115230/255

9 miles of traffic

if a car is 14 feet long, that is 3394 cars

an A380 can carry 853 passengers

a trans-Pacific flight is equivalent to a 9-mile queue of commuters, only 1/4 of a person per car

there is no way changing light bulbs or buying a hybrid justifies jetting around the planet

by wackatalpidae at 1:10 PM on 31 Aug 2007

Making choices

Sometimes one has to make a choice between what is fun and what one knows to be right. This is how character is formed.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

by Bart Anderson at 2:37 PM on 31 Aug 2007

But you don't fly everyday.

Flying contributes about 2-3% in total to global CO2 emissions. This is because people don't fly everyday - with the exception of the very rich and frequent business commuters, the rest of us are flying a handful of times each year at the most.

On the other hand, the daily electricity usage and the daily commute of everyone in total vastly overshadows the occasional flying of your average person. So yes, a single flight is worse than a single queue of traffic, but we're making hundreds of those queues and only one of those flights.

So to directly contradict you, if humanity as a whole continued flying at the roughly same rate as we do now while changing all our lightbulbs to CFLs and driving hybrids, we would be doing a order of magnitude better than we could ever do by eliminating ALL flying.

Consider that for a second. Just making the bare minimum changes to lighting and transportation helps the environment more than completely eliminating flying. That would mean no more going to your mother's funeral. No more shipping. No more IPCC conferences. No more studying abroad. Not without many of those things requiring a month of transit time. You would lose all of that, yet the environment would only gain a fraction of the benefit of changing some light bulbs.

At the moment, there is no replacement technology for flying. The best we can do is encourage fuel efficiency, more efficient routing, and offsets. Airlines like EasyJet even allow you to add carbon offsets to your flight when you purchase your tickets. (They should do it for everyone automatically but it's a start at least.)

Flying and travel in general has a direct benefit to society, and it's not something we can stop doing. People need rest and relaxation, they need to be exposed to different places and different cultures, and they need to visit different people and exchange ideas. There's no getting around it.

by s5 at 6:28 PM on 31 Aug 2007
[ Parent ]

Funny definition of "need" there

How did we evolve this "need" to fly so suddenly? Is it possible that we're confusing a strongly felt wish, a fervent desire, with need?

The 5% Project

by JMG at 6:58 PM on 31 Aug 2007

Fly smart.

Interestingly enough I recall an innovative architectural green design that never got built but made a lot of sense. The concept was marvelously simple. Most airplanes burn gas the most during take off and landings. This model allowed for the landing strip to be ramped up a certain number of degrees to cut down on engine and brake use while landing and on the other side it was ramped down to make for easier lift offs. The terminal was underground in the middle to conserve heat and maintain a decent temperature without the energy. Now if all airplanes were packed when they went on trips it wouldn't be anymore gas flying across country rather than driving the distance. But I have faith that while cars may prove themselves unsustainable forever (see my website) planes could come around the corner and be designed for greenness. Maybe perhaps slower trips? What about enjoying our flights? It really astounds me that our planet use flying solely as a tool and don't marvel in the experience. Maybe we should use dirigibles.

The Black Car Project Killing cars before they kill us!

by wildleaf at 8:33 PM on 31 Aug 2007
[ Parent ]

Where to start.....

Just for starters we have too much CO2 in the atmosphere right now. So any added greenhouse gases at all is too much. To save the ecosystems we are used to haveing around we have to go to a carbon negative energy profile.

So it doesn't matter if we fly or drive because as long as either emits CO2 we are selling our kids to a doomed future. If we absolutely must maintain an air transport system it has been pointed out by some of the worlds best aircraft designers that lighter-than-air craft could be solar powered.

But go ahead, take that last flight to see an endangered biome. Just don't bitch when wacky weather trashes your house.

Put the Carbon Back

by Pangolin at 1:16 AM on 01 Sep 2007

Ways to be a green traveler

Full disclosure: I'm at Kayak.com, so please read my comments accordingly.

Sarah, thanks for posting the link to our newsletter. After this week's newsletter, we received a number of comments from our readers in the past few days asking what they can do to be more responsible when traveling on more prosaic trips (e.g. seeing family over Christmas, a business trip to Chicago). Asking people to give up seeing their family on the holidays is a pretty steep request, but I think our readers would love to know what they can do to be responsible in the process. Not buying bottled water? Turning off AC when leaving a hotel? Assuming that individuals will still fly around the world, what can be done to reduce the impact of travel?

I'd love to get any ideas we can share with our readers. We're planning to mention these ideas in our newsletter next week.

Thanks,
drew

by agpatters at 8:15 AM on 01 Sep 2007

Those fluorescent bulbs

If you want to do something green, "those fluorescent bulbs" are available in all shapes and sizes at my website www.greenlightsusa.com.

The U.S. using these light bulbs would be like taking millions of cars off the road.

Sarah, thanks for posting about eco-themed tours. It's wonderful that everyone's becoming more eco-conscious! (=

Best regards,
Eddie Chu
Founder, GreenLights

GreenLights
LOVE OUR PLANET. LIVE GREEN.
www.greenlightsusa.com

by eddiechu at 9:13 AM on 01 Sep 2007

Getting serious about air travel and climate

drew:

I think our readers would love to know what they can do to be responsible in the process.

Unfortunately, the most responsible thing they can do, Drew, is think twice about their need for flying.

The arguments against flying are compelling. It is becoming increasingly hard to fly and to consider onself environmentally aware. We had a long discussion about flying in April.

WorldChanging, a site that embraces technology, just published three thoughtful articles which seriously question air travel:
Greening Air Travel
Climate, Conscience, and Atmospheric Carbon
Fly Less, Videoconference More

Those of us who love the outdoors are going to have to change, just as everybody else will. For example, we probably should do most of our outdoorsing nearby - get to know our own hills and lakes and deltas, rather than jetting off to Peru.

SF writer Kim Stanley Robinson had a wonderful story about this at GORP: The Future of Adventure.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

by Bart Anderson at 11:59 AM on 01 Sep 2007

ADVERTISING POLICY

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