We're All Going On An Low Carbon Holiday...
Sitting in his office looking out on a drizzly May Monday, Gareth Kane considers what his eco-friendly holiday options are.
Leafing through the paper this morning I found two ads on consecutive pages. The first is from Boeing boasting that their new 747 has 15% better fuel consumption and 30% less noise footprint than the last one. Flipping the page, there's a double page spread from Eurostar telling me in six months that all their journeys will be carbon neutral, at 186mph, and will soon be leaving from St Pancras. It looks as if environmental concerns about travelling are getting the industry's serious attention (as opposed to the guff spouted by certain economy airlines).
Like many people who now bang the green drum, I've done more than my fair share of long distance travelling. Some of it has been low(ish) carbon - I once got to Murmansk in the Russian Arctic by train - but most has involved flying. I hate flying: sitting for hours in a pressurised tin can (which no one can persuade me isn't held up by some form of witchcraft) trying to watch some anodyne movie with all the good bits edited out or trying to sleep with some eedjit's knees stuck in the back of my seat.
Trains, on the other hand, are brilliant. They leave and arrive from the centre of towns and cities, and you get to see the country you are travelling through. You don't have to turn up several hours beforehand, you're allowed to take your nail scissors with you, and, no matter what the statistics say, there's always the reassuring thought that if something goes wrong, you can walk from the wreckage. One of the best journeys I have ever taken was two years ago - breakfast on the train from Newcastle down to London, posh lunch by the Thames, and on by Eurostar and Metro to our romantic hotel in St Germain des Pres, Paris just in time to find somewhere nice to eat dinner. Now that's real travelling.
On the environmental front, trains emit an average of about 50g carbon dioxide per passenger per km, compared with the new 747's claim of 75g, and a typical new car's emissions of 150g. This looks as if travelling by train isn't much better at all, but it is not quite that simple. Climate scientists normally add in a fudge factor to account for the effect of the plane's contrails (the white cloud like water emissions you see behind an aircraft on a clear day), which are said to increase the climate change impact by between 2-4 times what the same emissions would do at ground level. If you count this in the train is about 4 times better than flying.
So my foray abroad this year is to Cologne by way of Brussels on Eurostar and connections (with plenty of good food factored in). And the luxury sleeper trip to Madrid is still on the 'must do sometime' list.
Until next time,
Gareth
Gareth Kane
Eco-living Blog
Terra Infirma
