Thinking Green
Tuesday 23rd January, 2007 17:22 Comments: 0
When Barbara Haddrill was invited to her friend's wedding in Australia in October, she had a dilemma. She had promised not to fly any more for environmental reasons but as bridesmaid, she felt obliged to attend. So instead of a departure hall at Heathrow and a possible stopover in Kuala Lumpur, Barbara went via Moscow, Beijing, Hanoi, Bangkok, Singapore and Darwin in an epic journey taking nearly two months and taking in train, boat and bus. The decision reflected changes Barbara had made to her everyday life during the last five or six years, due to her concern about the effect humans were having on the environment, especially in carbon emissions.
She no longer drives, buys organic, locally-sourced food and uses a wood-burner to heat her home, which is a caravan near Machynlleth, in a forest in mid-Wales. And while the 51 days Barbara spent getting to Oz would be longer than many tourists' holidays, as a part-time worker at the Centre for Alternative Technology, she has the flexibility to build such a journey into her life.
To travel from the UK to Australia, it cost Barbara £2,000 to travel 14,004 miles in 51 days, which produced carbon emissions of 1.65 tonnes. To travel by plane it costs £450 to travel 10,273 miles in around 25 hrs (transit time, security, customs) and produces 2.7 tonnes.
So yes, it's a less harmful way to travel. But it takes a lot longer, and most of us don't have the luxury of taking 2 months off work (or 4 months if you want to get home). Also, most people tend to have mortgages to pay on houses, rather than living in a caravan, and can't afford to spend over 4x the amount - especially if we're taking so much time off work! And, more importantly, Barbara didn't actually reduce the carbon emissions, as I'm sure the plane she could have taken would have flown that route anyway! So all she did was inconvenience herself and spend a lot more money. Perhaps she enjoyed the travelling and treated it as a holiday, at least I hope she did otherwise the entire long journey was pretty pointless.
The West family, in the second half of the article, clearly had a better idea. They were better to the environment (although it did cost them more than double), and the increase in time wouldn't have impacted too much on their other commitments. I bet that the plane they'd have otherwise taken still flew to Tuscany anyway. One person can't make a difference. Of course, if they lead by example perhaps they will encourage others to find alternate means, and perhaps if enough people stop flying everywhere then fewer planes will fly.
But fewer flights also makes it less convenient for those of us that need to fly (e.g. a day of training in Scotland could cost a company a lot more in petrol than taking an easyJet flight, the travel time would wipe out most of any margin, and would force the employee to be away from home for 3 days).
She no longer drives, buys organic, locally-sourced food and uses a wood-burner to heat her home, which is a caravan near Machynlleth, in a forest in mid-Wales. And while the 51 days Barbara spent getting to Oz would be longer than many tourists' holidays, as a part-time worker at the Centre for Alternative Technology, she has the flexibility to build such a journey into her life.
To travel from the UK to Australia, it cost Barbara £2,000 to travel 14,004 miles in 51 days, which produced carbon emissions of 1.65 tonnes. To travel by plane it costs £450 to travel 10,273 miles in around 25 hrs (transit time, security, customs) and produces 2.7 tonnes.
So yes, it's a less harmful way to travel. But it takes a lot longer, and most of us don't have the luxury of taking 2 months off work (or 4 months if you want to get home). Also, most people tend to have mortgages to pay on houses, rather than living in a caravan, and can't afford to spend over 4x the amount - especially if we're taking so much time off work! And, more importantly, Barbara didn't actually reduce the carbon emissions, as I'm sure the plane she could have taken would have flown that route anyway! So all she did was inconvenience herself and spend a lot more money. Perhaps she enjoyed the travelling and treated it as a holiday, at least I hope she did otherwise the entire long journey was pretty pointless.
The West family, in the second half of the article, clearly had a better idea. They were better to the environment (although it did cost them more than double), and the increase in time wouldn't have impacted too much on their other commitments. I bet that the plane they'd have otherwise taken still flew to Tuscany anyway. One person can't make a difference. Of course, if they lead by example perhaps they will encourage others to find alternate means, and perhaps if enough people stop flying everywhere then fewer planes will fly.
But fewer flights also makes it less convenient for those of us that need to fly (e.g. a day of training in Scotland could cost a company a lot more in petrol than taking an easyJet flight, the travel time would wipe out most of any margin, and would force the employee to be away from home for 3 days).