The green way to get to Australia
The UK’s Independent is running a story The green way to get to Australia.
When Barbara Haddrill was asked to be a bridesmaid at her friend’s wedding in Brisbane, she faced a dilemma: how to make the 10,000-mile journey without offending her environmental principles.
The ecology worker has decided that her planet-friendly principles prevent her from jumping on an aircraft for the 22-hour journey from London to Brisbane at a cost of about £900 and the production of 5.2 tons of carbon dioxide per passenger. The amount of CO2 is equivalent to that generated by heating five modern houses for a year.
So far so good, but then Babs, as she calls herself on her blog Babs to Brisbane (and back), has chosen a rather complicated solution to her travel bind. Barbara has decided to travel from Wales to Brisbane by land and sea. She’s getting the train to London (26kg of CO2), then a bus to Moscow (194kg of CO2 presumably not counting the cost of the ferry that carried the bus over water), then a train to Bejing (420kg of CO2, probably not counting the emissions from the taxi from the bus terminal to the railway station), then a train to Shanghai (another 105kg of CO2), then a boat to Brisbane (700kg of CO2). All this totals around 1.4 tonnes of CO2, compared to around 5 tonnes of CO2 or so to fly.
Now I am sure Babs is well meaning and is looking forward to a fabulous trip, and by her own admission she has little else to do with her time. But for anyone without the month or so it will take, or the inclination to deal with, and rely on the Russian and Chinese bus, rail and cargo-ship schedules, then a far far simpler solution is to offset the emissions of her trip by buying some carbon credits. Naturally Carbon Planet, as a carbon credit retailer, is happy to help. — DS
Technorati Tags: airlines, Australia, aviation, climate change, CO2, eco, emissions reduction, energy, environment, global warming, travel, UK
