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How can a man, riding on an ox, looking for an ox, ever find an ox?
| Why bother even trying? | |
"I am just one person and my work is highly important. I have to fly a lot to do my job and make my contribution to the economy and a better world. And anyway, I am only one person. The problem is not measured in such small personal doses. So please, leave me alone and let me get on with my important contribution." Uh huh!
It's quite a challenge here in the turmoiled 21st century to live a sustainable life when technology, our unexamined habits and for some of us sheer abundance-- the many agreeable 'acquis' of the rich and profligate North of our time -- invariably have us, more or less on auto- pilot, opting for daily life choices, small and large, inconsequential and egregious, which together add up to pretty unsustainable lives. Even for those of us who are deeply concerned about the issues of sustainable development for the planet as a whole. But that whole is made up of each of us, one by one -- and no less important many of the "us's" working on these issues are people with potential high public exposure. Thus our examples count double.
So if I for one decide I "need" to travel from Paris to ,say, Sydney for my work to advance the sustainability agenda in concrete ways -- if I use the Climate Care or some other good CO2 calculator I can see without a doubt that in the process through my personal actions I will cause some five tons of CO2 to be spewed into the atmosphere. Hmm. How many time a year can I permit myself to do that? Is there a more efficient way to get the job done? Or at least if I do make the trip, how can I make sure that I am responsible in my choice? I better do a lot and work hard and smart while I am there or the planet will be the loser.
This page offers (below) a selection of the growing collection of web-based devices that permit us to get a better grip on the impact of our choices, of our actual actions. And perhaps with this knowledge, we may modify our choices. Some of us? At least perhaps some of our choices? In any event the sheer knowledge of what we are doing should be a step in the right direction.
I end the page with a bit on my own travel philosophy in the face of these important challenges. (And how am I doing? Have a look. Not so great. But I'm working on it.)
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| Ten Practical Suggestions for Limiting Your Carbon Emissions - Travel & Transport | |
- Calculate your own carbon dioxide emissions: find out how much you are contributing to global warming. In order to obtain a fairly reliable figure, use a carbon calculator (see below).
- Drastically reduce or stop flying: it is the most damaging means of travel per kilometre and is associated with long-distance journeys.
- Get rid of your car if you can calculate how much money you would save .
- Buy the most fuel efficient car if you have to have one, but use it sparingly. Get a gas-powered car (or convert your car to gas): it is cheaper to run and emits less carbon dioxide. You may be able to get a government grant to do so.
- Change your driving habits: restrict your speed (driving at 70mph uses 30% more energy than at 50mph), use higher gears as soon as traffic conditions allow, and don't run your engine when stationary. Service your car regularly and keep tyre pressures up. If you have air conditioning, limit its use.
- Move closer to your work or choose a job closer to your home, and work from home, whenever possible
- Change your other travel patterns: cycle or walk for local trips. (It will also improve your health and fitness.) Use local shops and services, select local schools, take holidays close to home, and use the bus rather than drive.
- Get your local schools, colleges and public services to produce green travel plans to discourage long-distance commuting, to promote cycling, walking and bus use, and to car pool and share a ride whenever possible
- Spread the word: tell people what you are doing to prevent climate change and why you are doing it, and encourage them to do likewise.
- Join an environmental pressure group with a good track record in influencing politicians on critical issues such as taking steps to restrict fuel use dramatically.
Adapted with permission from Mayer Hillman (with Tina Fawcett) How we can save the planet, Penguin Books, 2004, ISBN 0-141-01692-2.
| Some Emissions Calculators to test yourself with | |
There are a fast growing number of these around now. Here are some of the ones that we have found most useful.
Clean up your CO2 emissions quickly and efficiently, just by using one or more of our Carbon Calculators.
- For all your daily emissions, click through to our Car & Home Calculator. There you can repair your impact on global warming, by offsetting the CO2 you produce driving your car(s) and heating and lighting your home.
- A return trip from London to New York for one individual, generates more CO2 than driving a family car for 3 months. Air travel is climate-costly, so offset your aviation today using our Air Travel Calculator.
- Too busy to calculate your offsets? Then just go straight to our new Fixed Offset Options where you'll find an offset to fit every pocket.
On this site you can 'neutralize' the contribution you or your business makes to global warming. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are one of the main causes of global warming. And we all produce it from almost everything we do - from running a business to boiling a kettle.
Sustainability means achieving satisfying lives for all within the means of nature - now and in the future. The extent to which we're using more than nature can provide can be measured with the Ecological Footprint. This information points us to actions that can address fundamental sustainability concerns, and it gives us a way to measure our progress. Check it out and see how you are doing. Happy?
supports a sustainable economy by promoting the Ecological Footprint, a tool that makes sustainability measurable. We coordinate research and develop methodological standards so that decision makers have robust resource accounts to ensure that we live within the Earth's budget.
(In German, but if your language skills are not up to it, use the Translate Helper.) The CO2-Rechner permits it to you to determine your influence on the climate and adjust perhaps your choices and your emissions.
The SafeClimate carbon footprint calculator allows you to determine carbon dioxide emissions from major sources: home energy consumption and transportation by car and plane.
has been developed to give you many reasons to eat sustainably, but, ultimately, only you can answer that question.
The website for those interested in learning more about how travel habits and transportation choices affect global climate change. TravelMatters offers a trio of resources-interactive emissions calculators, on-line emissions maps, and a wealth of educational content-to emphasize the close relationship between more efficient transit systems and lower greenhouse gas emissions
| Getting real: How to offset your emissions when you have to do it | |
There are two major points we would like to make here. The first is to bring to your attention a handful of websites and programs that you can already use easily to offset your emissions (sins?) when you absolutely have to climb onto that plane. Then, an idea that we should like to explore with you in the weeks ahead about how we might both do this and at the same time use the resources that it brings in to back specific actions, programs and groups that in our view are worthy of support. Let's start with those already offering off-set arrangements that you can start to use today:
Some existing Offset Programs you can start to use today:
- The Climate Trust is a leading non-profit organization dedicated to providing solutions to stabilize our rapidly changing climate
The Climate Trust Offset Program invests funds received from power plants, businesses, and individuals into projects that offset their GHG emissions>. The Program is aimed at "Large Emitters" (power plants and the like), the "Donate-to-Offset Organizations program" and a parallel program for employees of cooperating organizations .
Climate Trust is a US based non-profit, and the income received from the various offers is invested into their project portfolio which includes: energy efficiency, renewable energy, cogeneration, transportation efficiency, and reforestation projects. - "Sustainable Travel International now offers MyClimate™, "a unique service that reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Through the MyClimate™ program, travelers, corporations, travel service providers, and academic institutions can take concrete action to fight climate change by investing in WWF-certified carbon offset projects that help to neutralize the negative impacts of their air and ground travel." They also have a " Travelers' Philanthropy" program. Otherwise they have their own carbon calculator for estimating the necessary offsets, and a choice of WWF approved projects for your money.
- The CarbonNeutral Company (formerly Future Forests) maintains a number of carbon offset and forestry projects, and has its own range of Carbon Calculators to work out your personal emissions. They also have a simple CarbonNeutral Citizen's program which gives you an opportunity to make an annual donation that will go at least part way to compensate for your life style choices. In their cases the money received for charitable donations has been directed, for the past three years, towards Transparency International's Forestry Integrity Network, which campaigns against bribery and corruption in management and exploitation of the world's natural resources.
- Climate Care offers organizations and individuals a way to reduce their impact on global warming. It sells carbon offsets on the one hand while funding and managing projects on the other. They also have an ingenious Fixed Offsets program which allows you to pay by credit card for your calculated life style emissions.
So let's see how this last one might guide me for that round trip flight from Paris to Sydney. I first turn to their Air Travel Calculator, which informs me that my round trip is going to generate close to five tons of CO2, for which my "offset" costs according to their calculation is on the order of 31 Pounds Sterling (roughly $55). Okay. I then click to make a secure payment through the credit card and currency of my choice -- and bingo I have paid for my latest eco-sin.
Of course if we possibly can the best is simply not to take that next flight and otherwise be reasonably carbon-modest with all that entails. But if you for some reason are caught this time, then please consider making a contribution to one of these offset programs of your choice. You can be sure that this extra amount of awareness is in time going to pay off. So you are already making an important first step.
Note: All of these programs offer certificates or other forms of recognition for your good civic behaviour. But hey! is that enough?
Each time you do it, you send us an entry that we can post? (until the day that. . . )
| How am I (eric britton) doing? | |
Aaaargh! Don't ask. I guess the answer to that is not too horribly badly for a dullish, somewhat over-schooled, hence exaggeratedly privileged middle class male with international work pretensions . . but given the scale and urgency of the problems here in the opening years of this new and environmentally threatened century, not nearly enough. Yet.
In daily life like most of you I am sure, I try to be pretty energy frugal. I live in a small well insulated apartment, turn off lights when I leave the room, am careful about water, no air conditioning, enjoy cool rooms in the winter, sort my garbage, etc. The usual. When it comes to getting around in Paris, almost all of my trips are by foot and bike (both my own and using our great Vélib's). And our world-level transit system that most cities would die for. The missing piece of me personal new mobility puzzle for now is convenient carsharing, which is not yet here. So for the occasional trips where a car is needed, I still have my old Honda that I am trying to convert to ethanol (not so easy here in France, so in the meantime I satisfy myself with the quite strict annual tailpipe tests) but on which I put less than a thousand kms a year. And be sure I will junk the damn thing as soon as we have more convenient carsharing here in Paris (perhaps by end 2009 as the city is now promising).
| Air travel minimization - personal choices and practices | |
Where I think I do fairly well by comparison with many of my peers is in my systematic avoidance of what I consider to be unnecessary air travel. I have two ways of accomplishing this: think of them as supply and demand management. From the vantage of supply, since 1993 we have been assiduous users in our daily work of videoconferencing and IP group work tools as a travel substitute. . . but really and above all as a work enhancer. We use this not only for the usual one-on-one sessions and exchanges, but also for group meetings and even on quite regular occasions to permit my full participation in conferences held in distance locations. (Click here in case you are not aware of the current state of play in our use of these handy low cost technologies.)
On the demand side, my strategies are two. First, I refuse to go to any distant location just for a one or two day conference or whatever. If I am going to go to Bogotá, Bangkok or Bangor, it will not be for just a quick in and out you go visit. I insist that once there, I will have to stay, work and be paid fairly for at least one full day on that place's sustainability agenda, for each hour I have to spend in an airplane getting there. So ten hours of uncomfortable jet travel to LA, means ten days of work on LA specific problems in areas of my expertise. The advantage of this is that it serves as more TDM, and at the same time permits me to be more useful in my work with colleagues and groups in that place.
But there is another huge advantage from my own personal work and knowledge perspective, and that is when I have a chance to work closely with the people in each of these places, I simply learn a great deal. And I would like to think communicate a lot to them as well. In any event for me it's a no-brainer and that's the way it is.
To reinforce my travel minimization philosophy (and this does not hurt) I always require business class travel and first class hotel accommodations when I travel. (If you look at the fare tables to check out these prices you will see how this can be quite effective as a TDM measure all by itself. I always suggest o my clients that they sit down before getting their travel agent's quote on this.)
How does this work out? Well, when I run the Ecological Footprint drill for myself my results suggest that if everyone on the planet behaved as I do, we would need at least another half a planet to serve all of us. Ouch! On the other had, were I living in say Los Angeles with a life style that goes with the place, we'd need closer to eight planets. Bottom line: slight satisfaction but clearly I can and should do better. Let's see now: get rid of that old banger as soon as there is a carshare operations that I can use. Hmm. Any other thoughts for me?
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Last updated on 10 December 2004