Are you away on business or pleasure, sir? Either way, every flight contributes to climate change. Plan not to fly as far, try not to fly often and use carbon offsetting to limit the impact whenever you do fly. Every time you find an alternative method of transport you are helping to halt climate change.
I agree with jamoboggins; air travel other than essential love miles is a con; offsetting merely a salve for the guilty conscience. Beset with problems, even local solutions not as straightforward as they seem...
Bee 2, you asked if there were any exceptional Carbon Offset schemes out there, well as we know Carbon Offsetting is a tricky business & many aspects of it worry me. For a more holistic approach check out http://www.ozgreen.org.au/news.php & see link on offsetting.We are not accredited but we work by purchasing the tress from locals,employing locals to do the work & we plant trees that produce food.Great!
We recently got our vehicle converted to veg oil with EcoCar, and now we (3people) are planning a little summer holiday, but we will drive rather than flying.
I have purchased carbon offsets for all of my flights last year and will do so for all future flights. I have also purchased offsets for family members going on trips as gifts.
I use Terra Pass, www.terrapass.com , to purchase them. They also offer offsets for your home energy use and your vehicle mileage. You answer a few simple questions regarding your flight, vehicle, or home and it calculates your carbon footprint. You can then purchase offsets based on this information.
I have also used other means of transportation, e.g. bus and train, instead of taking a short flight.
I don't fly at all. Offsetting is a rather confusing way to think about reducing carbon - it doesn't scrub the CO2 from the atmosphere. Instead it relies on guessing what might have happened otherwise. For example, one of Climate Care's schemes in India involves encouraging farmers to go back to manually ploughing the land instead of using diesel generators. But the diesel generator is inevitably sold and used elsewhere, whilst offsetting money just subsidises the loss of earnings for the farmers. Meanwhile in the UK we use loads of diesel machinery. We need to stop flying, otherwise we're just kidding ourselves about reduced impact.
Most airlines offer you the option of offsetting your flight when you make the booking, but I'm never really sure how that money is used. Anybody have any quality offsetting websites or organizations to share?
AIGA's Center for Sustainable Design offers offsets for flights at http://sustainability.aiga.org/content.cfm//sus_resources/sus_greening/carboncool
myclimate.org seems to be highly regarded.
If anyone comes across an exceptional offsetting program let the hive know. Climate Care are good and there are others, anyone else?
Now that's an excellent question. I supposed it must be more beneficial just dealing with electronic presents that physical ones, but perhaps hard to qualify.
I'd have to agree however that said I think I will pass this one onto an expert and get back to you.
Its a good question but is it the right question ? I say this because there are so many unknowns in the search for an answer. Such as, do you live in a city or at the end of the least-frequented road on the planet ? Or will there be some air-transport involved , or rail transport involved ? Or the size of the parcel ? But I think a better question is: Should you be knocking yourself out trying to figure it out in place of Amazon themselves, the people who should provide you with this information ?
To this end I'll be creating a new goal: "Ask Amazon.com to provide transport-related emissions data for their deliveries and define an emissions management/reduction policy".
Amazon.com get slated by Carbon Counts in a review of different companies and their emissions management policies, see http://climatecounts.org/scorecard_score.php?co=10 for more details.
You see its a question of responsibility, Amazon are responsible for the delivery, and the associated emissions, at least according to current emissions accounting standards. So, I say, don't worry about the parcel, just make sure the music is good.
Yes! However if they were to carry only passengers they would be even more efficient. For example here is a comparission
London to Tangier by plane 5 hours,435Kg/CO2
48 hours by Eurostar, sleeper trains & ferry, 63 Kg/CO2
I'd have to say no. The figures bandied about for ferry travel are way off the mark, often in the 50-100gCO2e/km/pax range. Ferries are a complex nut to crack and in my most recent attempt I'm coming out at flying being a cleaner option.
I did the figures for an Ireland/France trip by ferry, in a car with 4 adults. The results show the ferry at 87 kg CO2e/trip as compared to 56kg CO2e for airtravel. Have a look at http://theblog.carbontracking.com/?p=12 to see what you think of the figures.
Interesting, and as you say a tough nut to crack! I'll look into the carbon tracking stuff. Nice one small cog!
Just to echo smallcog (and based on reading calculations done elsewhere, rather than calculations of my own): high-speed ferries in particular have a footprint similar to flying (not surprising, they are essentially jet engines on water); likewise, long-haul trains: providing sleeper accommodation means they carry fewer passengers, so the fuel consumption per passenger kilometre is about the same as flying.
Mary M.
I'm always dubious about using an airline's recommended provider. Carbon offsetting can be a bit of a scam sometime. Is there a site which rates them?
I'm yet to be convinced that offsetting is at all helpful. Isn't it just a way for the rich to buy their way out of guilt?
Yeah but there must be some way, like if for every mile you fly you spend 5 minutes at night without heat or light....so wrap up warm and go to bed at dusk a few nights every month.
Carbon off setting is rubbish. check cheatneutral
http://www.cheatneutral.com/
Well - the views expressed are reasonable - but.....sometimes activites which emit CO2 have to be done. Surely we should be aiming to be neutral, and that in itself would suggest we need to take action to off-set certain necessary activities; like flying long haul for business; maybe we can find real off-setting programmes that are not rip offs and do make a difference - thats gotta be a good thing - not just for guilt, but for the planet?
Without a doubt, the idea that there is nothing you can do about the carbon that is emitted is not a reality, reducing what you do and then finding the right offsetting partner to work with, this all contributes to the move in the right direction. But in reality we jump on planes too easily and government taxes on aviation fuel is not high enough by half.
There are some standards you can use to judge carbon offsets. <a href="http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/What_You_Can_Do/carbon_offsets.asp">This article</a> talks about VCS, Green-e, and The Gold Standard.
All three specifically exclude tree planting because that does not take carbon out of circulation, it just traps it in a tree for the life of the tree.
I have to say that the current reality of investing in alternative energies without a global commitment for reduction in consumption, just frees up fossil fuels for more business as usual.
Best solution: Don't take the flight and invest all the flight money, your pension and change in the piggy bank in some sort of sustainable enterprise, be it for energy production or political change.
Offsetting is just a guilt trip .. it's a no brainer, we just must use less carbon based sources while staying focussed on getting more from what we do use (i.e. a lot more efficiency) And i thoroughly endorse viewing www.cheatneutral.com and networking it to the sceptics as a very valid and easily digested argument !!
check out www.atmosfair.de
If you're gonna go with an offset company these guys are probably the best
Bee 2, you asked if there were any exceptional Carbon Offset schemes out there, well as we know Carbon Offsetting is a tricky business & many aspects of it worry me. For a more holistic approach check out http://www.ozgreen.org.au/news.php & see link on offsetting.We are not accredited but we work by purchasing the tress from locals,employing locals to do the work & we plant trees that produce food.Great!
This is geographically specific, but if you need to get from Dublin - London, consider using ferry + train. If you travel mid-week, there's a direct train from Hollyhead to London that takes 4 hours. Door to door for ferry + train is 7-8 hours, versus 4-5 hours for the plane. That's not a huge difference. Also at 88 EUR the ferry and train is prob. half the average plane flight cost.
I just thought I'd plant a tree, and it would easily compensate for the emissions of one flight during its lifetime.
The best is to do your own offsetting: give up something that you would have done otherwise. Don't buy the new television, don't use the car for a month, or give up meat. Read Chris Goodall's excellent analysis of why all carbon offsetting projects to date are ineffective: http://url.ie/pn3
Essentially, most would have happened anyway, and you are therefore are not paying for something additional.
