Should Lindsey fly? 28 June 06

Lindsey, you can fly with a clear-conscience if you’ve done something that (more than) offsets the flying.

• Become an active advocate of solar and nuclear power. Australia is in an excellent postion to use both.
• Plaster those shiny SUVs with bumper stickers. These are highly image conscious people – they’ve parted with good money for something they don’t really need. Things like:
  • Big SUV – little manhood
  • Climate change – what’s that?
  • Hybrid cars? Do I look like I care about the planet?
  • I’m doing my bit to change the climate.
  • Global warming – what can I do?
• Point out to any work mates who drive to the gym (I know of a few in Aussie) that if they were to walk/cycle to work, they could save money, time, petrol, CO2 and the environment.
• Picket their damned coal-fired power stations
• Do what you can to support (fix!) their rail system

Your parents need to be gently reminded that the environment matters.
But there’s good news, you’re going to be able to see them much more often via <u>videoconference or webcam</u>!
I do this sort of thing myself. You quickly find yourself much more in touch with someone on the other side of the planet than with the people next door.

If you’re still see problems despite these solutions… examine your priorities.

Best regards, Derek Gunn

I think it is great that you are taking the ethical dilemma of flying so seriously. Unfortunately though, most people, even those fully aware of global warming still fly. Loom at Al Gore jetting around the world!

The reality is that the plane will leave Australia and emit the same amount of carbon whether you are on it or not. It seems to me that you can, in good conscience, both fly and campaign for regulation of the airline industry that will eventually cut down the amount of flights people take.

Alex… by what mechanism do you suppose the airlines decide how many flights to have available?

Your argument is equivalent to saying:
“It’s OK, you can vote for the opposing party but our party will still win.”

Get people out of planes and onto the internet – NOW

Derek, thank you for your advice.

Whilst I still think that I could do a lot more to help the environment I do believe I do more than most people. Last winter we didn’t use a heater at all (mind, we did spend a month of that in the UK during their summer) and we used our air conditioner once this summer and that was because our nine-month pregnant sister-in-law was spending Christmas day with us. We’d do so much more (such as solar panels and recycling grey water) if we had our own place but we’re renting. As for using the internet to contact family, we do actually video conference with my parents once a week. However, the time difference is still an issue. There are only really a couple of convenient times a week when we can get together because we all work full-time. So, once we’ve spent an hour or so talking to my parents that leaves little time to get chatting to my sister or aunt before our bedtime. It is a fantastic medium though and I can’t imagine having moved to the other side of the world without it.

However, the internet, video images or not, does not in any way replace being in the same room as someone. You can’t hug someone over the internet, you can’t even make eye contact with them. I do not consider that a reasonable replacement for being together. The thought of never looking into my mother’s eyes again makes me want to cry.

Since my initial email to Mark I have actually subscribed to an Australian carbon neutralisation programme called GreenFleet and I will be encouraging family and friends who visit me to do the same. For those who struggle just to make the costs of the flight I will make the donation on their behalf. Whether it really makes up for the CO2 emitted by the aircraft I couldn’t say, but their calculations seem reasonable and at the end of the day I am contributing to the restoration of some important native ecosystems. So, whilst it doesn’t entirely solve the problem, it is, I hope, better than doing nothing.

The internet and webcams are a good replacement for business meetings, not personal relationships.

The problem is not someone flying once a year to see their family, it those that fly for vacation and business many times a year (and probably also own an SUV or two). I fear that these people can never be persuaded to limit their flights for ethical reasons. A corporate tax penalty for businesses that encourage excessive flying is one response to this problem. But telling a single individual that they can’t fly once a year to see their family smacks of an unnecessary puritanism, one that will not reduce carbon emmisions at all. In the long run such attitudes will do the camapaign against global warming no good at all. It is one thing to campaign against airport expansions, it is another to be seen telling an individual that they cannot take a rare flight for personal reasons.

is not as bad as just jetting around for fun. I think if the fun & vacation jetters would find happiness in their own back yards, maybe with their loved ones who live close by, that would perhaps cut air travel by a third to a half.

I’m wondering if there is any solution to reducing the GHGs emitted by jets. Supposing there is, and it costs more to fly those jets, one could pay the extra money so as to promote enery efficient jets over the higher GHG emitters.

And for those not yet attached, maybe looking for a mate with family close to home would help.

You really are on the horns of a dilemma, but one which can be addressed in all sincerity. The WWF has developed an ecological footprint calculator ( which can be found here: http://www.bestfootforward.com/footprintlife.htm) that gives one a perspective on personal impact over a wide range of activities. Have a look at your life before you moved to Aus, and the improvements you’ve made since. Quantify them in terms of CO2 emissions saved. Now work out what your Carbon emissions will be per person for a return flight to the UK and, just as if it were cash, start a budget to ‘save up’ the equivalent in carbon emissions from other areas of your life.

You may be surprised at the kind of impact you can have: using rainwater butts instead of a garden hose, saves not only drinking water but all the energy used to extract, purify and pump that water to your house. Eating red meat less frequently: fruit and vegetables are less energy intensive than raising livestock and you will be reducing both CO2 and methane emissions ( from cows’ farts!). Buy local, seasonal food if you can get it and reduce food miles and energy used for freezer storage etc. Recycle more: save those resources for re-use and cut down on the energy used in extracting and processing raw materials. Build a home compost or get a home wormery kit. Biodegradable material sent to landfill decomposes in th absence of oxygen and gives off Methane which has 23x the greenhouse effect of CO2.

All these might seem really nerdy, accademic and insignificant things to do, but they will add up your total of personal ‘carbon credits’ to the point where you can justify that flight. You will also learn so much more about the extractive, energy-wasteful methods of consumption and production that we all take for granted and you will gain (and I know this sounds cheesy) a real sense of satisfaction from making purchasing decisions where you are in control, you are getting better quality for your money and your decisions will force suppliers and retailers to change the way they procure from suppliers.

If you can do this as a family, you will also find the benefits in terms of ‘quality of life’ that this kind of informed decision-making and value-seeking will generate.

Your once-a-year long haul flight will therfore be far less damaging than those of the idiots from the city of London who fly down to Cornwall for a weekend’s surfing. And the UK government makes noises about the need to expand airports for more short-haul traffic whilst the train operating company cuts its direct services to Newquay for ‘operational efficiency reasons’.

If the French with their TGV network (and now Virgin with their discount London-Manchester Pendolino service) can wipe the floor with internal airlines, then a lot more can, should and must be done.

A visit to the Friends of the Earth website (www.foe.org.uk) is always a good idea when needing to get ‘focussed’ on the evils of expanded air travel. And yes, the internet and VOIP and video internet calls and the expansion of broadband availability and the increase in speeds will make video-calling cheaper and easier than ever for keeping in touch between the annual visits.

Good luck to you and remember ‘family comes first’. There are many, many more easy wins in the war against global warming that can be made before you have to abanadon your family.

Best wishes

Colin

In a word… no.
In fact, the more efficient the jets become, the less smoke (temporary global cooling) they produce.

No matter what, you always get CO2 and H20.

Airships and planes powered by biofuel might be CO2-neutral, but putting CO2 high in the atmosphere is said to have a disproportional effect on global warming.

If super-capacitors were able to hold sufficient charge to power aircraft as kerosine does now, we might well have have sustainable air travel once again.

I’ve travelled across the world and produced very little CO2.

Sailing is great ;-)

Lindsey, I don’t want to try and suggest an answer to what is a very difficult personal and ethical dilemma for you.

However, following on from what I mentioned before during a discussion on carbon offsets, I would suggest that you think very carefully whether giving money to a carbon-offset scheme which largely involves treen planting is really the best option. The link between most tree planting projects and carbon emissions is tenuous and controversial. Old growth forests and peat are where nature stores vast amounts of carbon. We cannot assume that we can simply create a new carbon sink by planting our own forests.

So, if you want to pay carbon offsets I would suggest that you EITHER choose a proven renewable energy or energy saving scheme, and check its claims out very carefully – OR you give your money to an organisation or campaign which strives to protect nature’s real and vital carbon sinks. And carbon offsets do not require that you use a carbon offset company. Giving money to a good and effective climate change campaigns group in Australia may also be an alternative.

Your choice of a carbon offset company suggests that you would like to put some money towards Australia’s forests. Might it be spent best if given, for example, to the Stop Gunn’s campaign in Tasmania, which is trying to save millions of ancient huge trees from being turned into paper? And those people certainly could use that money!

Almuth Ernsting

Now, many of us happen to be from parents from different countries and continents. I for instance live in a continent different to where my parents who are each from a different continent were born. One of them happens to live in his country of birth again, which means I have to fly to visit him and vice versa. The situation gets even more complicated as my children will have origins from 3 continents, and so on. Increasingly in today’s world, we have to be more and more connected. So, I am prepared to pay for my part, I’ll pay for reforestation, I walk to work 95% of the time, I use public transport majority of the time and recycle all that I can, plus always turn lights off when leaving a room, subscribe to renewable electricity, etc. etc. What more could I do right now?

Almuth; perhaps I’m out of touch. If one plants trees, then unless they somehow produce more CO2 than they take up, then they are going to do us good – surely?

A new forest will go on reducing atmospheric CO2 until it reaches it’s climax state, long before which, mature trees will be removed for other purposes.

Let’s take a real-life example.
I planted 5000 pinus radiata in an area that’s little different than desert; has been for the last 600 years I believe. Despite this, the pines grow surprisingly well.
Ten years have passed. 4500 survived the frost, hares, sheep and horses. We currently have >240 cubic metres of wood after trimming. In 4 more years, this will double.
By my calculations, we can produce wood at an average of 30m3/ha/year indefinitely.
The dried wood weighs 530kg/m3, so my 3 hectares will remove an average of ~45 tonnes of wood-based carbon per year. I hadn’t noticed before… it’s 10 kgs per tree per year! :-) I don’t know how much CO2 this represents, but I’d guess it’s at least twice the wood’s mass; perhaps 100 tonnes of CO2/year.

Is this not a carbon sink? I have read your palm oil article, but surely this is not what we’re talking about here?

(BTW I’m not related the the Tasmanian Gunns!)

Cheers,

Derek Gunn

Derek, My previous comment on carbon sinks which I referred to was the one to Mark’s article “Know your CDMs from your SBSTAs.

This is an extremely complex topic, and I still only understand it a little bit. Basically, we know that old growth forests hold billions of tons of carbon and are essential for a stable global climate. The IPPC evidence clearly shows that stopping deforestation would very considerably slow global warming.

Under the Kyoto Agreement, new tree plantations are being promoted whilst rainforests have no protection and are being destroyed faster than before. Private carbon offset companies tend to do the same (ie focus on new plantations only). The IPCC evidence suggests that even large-scale tree plantations projects could only have a minimum effect on atmospheric CO2 levels. I have not seen one study to the contrary.

Here are some reasons why new tree plantations do not necessarily sequester much carbon:

- they are often monocultures (or low-biodiversity plantations) and thus more vulnerable to climate change: There is new research that the Amazon has survived for 5 million years – ie some massive changes in temperatures and rainfall which, I fear, a monoculture of pine trees might not have done; - new tree-plantations cannot mimic the closed rainfall systems created by ancient rainforests, and are therefore more vulnerable to changes in rainfall patterns, which are inevitable as the planet gets warmer; - in some countries, tree plantation schemes under CDM have led to the displacement of communities and agricultures, without any monitoring whether native forests or other vegetation is displaced in turn, as a result; - tree plantations can displace other types of vegetation and release carbon as a result – for example planting trees on some types of peat can, I think, lead to high carbon emissions from soils.

There is some excellent background information on www.forests.org/ (search blog entries), and also on the CIFOR website, including here: http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/docs/_ref/polex/english/2003/2003_06_19.htm

Your tree plantation does sound like a really good project helping to create sustainable timber supplies and to prevent soil erosion. It might well help to keep emissions down, by reducing pressures on old growth forests. Still, in Australia there is a much better chance of the ancient temperate rainforests of Tasmania surviving if they don’t get chopped down, than some newly planted low-biodiversity forests making it through the next decades of global warming!

Almuth Ernsting

Below I argued that flying should be seen as a discretionary activity rather than an essential one such as eating, drinking, clothing and housing ourselves and travelling locally. I stand by that but realise I’m in a position to very easily make the no flying pledge.

While I’ve never been outside Europe I am lucky enough to have enjoyed a number of holidays in, typically, Greece and have visited other European countries, most memorably, parts of West and East Germany (i.e. Berlin) before the Wall came down.

Currently I have good friends in India (Delhi) and have had to decline their invitations. In one of my many conversations with various people on the issue of flying I was told “there are so many places … you just have to go and see them”. Maybe I’m lucky to be so unadventurous but I just don’t feel inclined to do this. There are plenty of places in Britain to explore. Neither am I “obliged” to do any sort of “love miles” flying. So not flying for me is relatively easy.

I do think though we all need to keep the big picture in mind very clearly. There is a great danger that we lose sight of just how privileged we are in developed countries with our high standards of living and artificially cheap access to fossil fuelled air (and other) travel. How many people are there on this planet who have ever been on an aircraft even once? I actually don’t know the answer but it’s going to be a very small percentage of the 6.5bn total. We’ve been seduced into an artificial and profoundly unsustainable way of life. A way of life which, of course, is relatively new.

I visited the Outer Hebrides a couple of years ago. I travelled by (diesel) car and ferry. One reason for going there was to see the remains of my great-great grandmother’s house. She lived from 1831 to 1924 in a modest dwelling constructed from stone gathered locally, with the roof made from drift wood, maybe the odd whale-bone and turf. The land and sea provided sustenance at what must have been close to subsistence level. She never left South Uist (a small island – check your map) in her whole life. But a long life, 10(!) children and a glowing obit in The Oban Times. Wow! All this just four generations back and 100 years ago or so. The rate of change has been incredible since then. I’m not suggested we return to subsistence living but we desperately need to change our current trajectory.

I think I’m right in saying that Mark will indicate in Six Degrees that according to projections Australia will be uninhabitable at some point in the future. Uninhabitable – that’s a lot worse than subsistence. Just as well projections are different from predictions and predictions in turn are dependent on what we do today, tomorrow and next week as well as the more distant future. But CO2 has a habit of hanging about. Today’s aircraft emissions (and the rest) will still be warming the planet in 100 years time.

I think we need to learn to live increasingly vicariously. We can’t all have all the experiences – obviously. I haven’t been to Peru but I do have a good idea of what parts of it are like from reading High Tide. I never heard John Coltrane play live at the Half Note. I missed Woodstock! Books and CDs and now those new fangled DVDs help me plug the gaps. (Woodstock –The Director’s Cut – of course!) But I know they are not a complete substitute for the real thing.

If we’d have had carbon rationing for the last couple of decades our living and travelling patterns would be significantly different today. The longer we are without carbon rationing the bigger the dangers and the more drastic the changes necessary.

I recommend we all live as if there was carbon rationing – starting now!

Douglas Coker

The latest New Internationalist, July 2006, price three pounds twenty five has several good pieces analysing the claims and facts of the Carbon Offset industry. For a host of social and environmental reasons, this is a wretched fake solution to our problems.

The articles were written by people from

www.fern.org www.carbontradewatch.org and the like

Marc Hudson, similar dilemma to Lindsey of the love miles, but no brats to muddy the water/stratosphere

If you really need to see people in other countries then take a boat / or boats and trains etc. I don’t know the difference in carbon emissions but I do know flying is a no-no now for anyone who is aware of its effects on climate change. Carbon offsetting is a con by the way as it doesn’t really offset carbon, it just makes people feel better about what they know they shouldn’t do.

Lindsey,

I have a lot of sympathy as my wife is Canadian, we live in London & she is very close to her family who also live in Canada.

Here are some thoughts:

1. Life Audit – Work out what the real differences will be to your carbon emissions (house, transport, flying), what are more readily transferable to zero-carbon & invest in changes. This is not just now but over the next few years. Think about how you would buy a flat/house and how you would go about transforming it with renewable energy. Realise that some things are really not making much difference.

2. Pace yourself – Governments have given themselves decades to sort this out! Think how you can organise yourself so that your daily life is carbon-neutral & plan for the long term.

3. You are not alone – We are where we are. Some things you are very difficult to change on an individual basis. Indeed, I think many of the most powerful changes we can make are in getting social/infrastructure change to happen. Do what you can – and don’t be too hard on yourself for things that are too difficult.

Given all the above, in the short term, don’t be too hard on yourself if you feel you really want/need to fly back to the UK.

Best wishes,

Peter