Offset your Airmiles
Been sunning yourself in foreign climes? Then consider offsetting your carbon emissions.
Climate Stewards AtmosFair Equiclimate
Why? Air travel is the most environmentally damaging form of travel, yet the rise of low cost airlines means that more of us are taking advantage of the chance to escape Britain’s unpredictable summers, and scoot off to sun-drenched lands.
Every flight we take has an impact on climate change that arises from the carbon dioxide emissions of burning jet fuel and other effects in the upper atmosphere. One single shorthaul flight produces roughly the same amount of the global warming gas as 3 months’ worth of driving a 1.4 litre car. The effect of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is cumulative, so acting now has more impact than acting later. You can’t do much about the fuel efficiency of aircraft, but if you ‘need’ a holiday or if you’re traveling on business, you can help reduce your personal contribution to global warming by making your flight carbon neutral.
Links: http://www.carbonneutral.com http://www.sustainabletravel.com
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Switch To Good (Green And / Or Socially Resonsible) Energy Plant A Tree Get Rid of Your Car – OK, ambitious, but…
taunton, GB , 01 Oct 2005
... or just holiday in Cornwall… it’s really nice and you don’t have to fly there…!
Milton Keynes, GB , 02 Oct 2005
flew within uk for the first time last july and will offset flight by planting one tree with carbonneutral – tend to have holidays within uk now as have young children.
02 Oct 2005
This is one I’ve been thinking about for a while and trying to avoid… I’ve racked up >100,000 air miles with BA[] so far this year and on top of that numerous internal US and short haul european flights; all of which have been on business. Guess it needs to be #1 on my todo list.
I going to try to do the following by the end of this year:
And this one by the end of Feb 2006:
If anyone’s had any experience of getting employers to buy into this, the tips would be appreciated.
Also, has anyone thought or read anywhere about using air miles to pay for offsetting flight emissions? I haven’t really thought it through, but one advantage looks like it would take the miles out of the system which might otherwise be used on more flights.
[*] BA has recently started promoting offsetting with Climate Care on on-line bookings (http://www.britishairways.com/travel/climateimpact/public/en_gb)
Prudhoe, GB , 03 Oct 2005
I don’t know the science, but it seems unlikely that planting the odd tree will make much differnce to the tons of CO2 air travel emits per passenger. Would it not be much betterto avoid air travel altogether? We haven’t been on a plane since 1997 when we honeymooned in India, but since then we have travelled twise to Spain, twise to France, once to Norway and all over Britain, using bikes, trains, busses and coaches. Its really not difficult, and, in many ways, even more fun than flying!
Norwich, GB , 06 Oct 2005
Cool. Just back from a trip to Barcelona for my 30th birthday. I agree that planting a tree probably isn’t going to make an immediate difference to much other than my guilty conscience! But it has done that and made my holiday even more satisfying!
02 Nov 2005
Posting this one from Australia where we are visiting family. The trip was really important to us, but we were suffering from associated guilt until we went on the Carbon Neutral website. You put in the exact details of your trip and it calculates the CO2 emissions and works that back into the number of trees you need to plant to offset it. It looks reasonably convincing to me, and does give you a way to make good the damage if you have to travel. Couldn’t be easier either!
14 Nov 2005
We have been a bit hit and miss with regard to offsetting flights over the past couple of years. We were introduced to the idea by Journey Latin America, a tour company who organised a holiday in Peru for us. From carbon point of view it would probably be better not to fly, but travelling independently delivers cash into developing countries and promotes the development of national parks etc. Besides we enjoy travelling. Offsetting seems like the next best thing.
New Malden, GB , 10 Jan 2006
I’ve offset a recent flight to Germany and also offset some flights and other carbon usage for other people as Christmas presents. I plan to do this every time I take a flight, which isn’t very often.
25 Mar 2006
I’m off to Honduras in April on mission with my church – realised by doing the online calculations that a scary amount of pollution occurs as a result of my trip. I like the fact that I can give my money to be invested into projects that help the environment. It seemed wrong to be going out there to do good and messing up the environment en-route! I’ve encouraged the group I’m going with to do the same :-)
Banchory, GB , 07 May 2006
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but don’t fly much. However we’re going to Austria next spring, so I decided to go for it – amazed at how cheap it was. As the other Lindsey said, it does make you feel a bit better about it, but I’ll still be lobbying for a tax on air fuel!
13 Jun 2006
Of course cutting down on flying is the best option, but its not always possible. The best carbon offsetting schemes are the ones that support renewable energy projects rather than just focusing on carbon sequestration (planting trees to remove and store the CO2 from the atmosphere equivalent to your flight).
A good website is http://www.atmosfair.de/ which is based in Germany but has an English translation site too. Their science seems more robust than some.
I like the idea of getting work to pick up the tab for offsetting work travel – I shall look into this….
18 Jul 2006
Haven’t flown for a decade, can’t really claim to be generous, as it is done by default.
24 Jul 2006
I was shocked to learn that planting trees DOESN’T offset carbon like they would have us believe. Read all about it in New Internationalist magazine issue NI391. We are being conned!
24 Jul 2006
Flying on holiday this week for the first time in five years. Just offset through Climate Care (thanks for the reminder prompt on Generous email, perfect timing!).
Would prefer not to fly at all, personally, and because of this we usually holiday in the UK or France, both of which are lovely.
24 Jul 2006
I couldn’t find the New Internationalist article online (thanks for mentioning it Malcolm) but I did find comment on it from Treehugger here:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/07/co2nned_carbon.php
Taunton, GB , 02 Aug 2006
Further to Malcolm’s comment:
I’ve just had a read of the New Internationalist edition (391 – July 2006) that concerns itself with carbon offsets.
Basically it is stating: 1. There is no logic that temporary carbon storage (trees) can make up for withdrawals from permanent carbon storage (gas, oil, coal). i.e. who knows what will happen to the trees in as little as a few years after they are planted. 2. Carbon offset companies sometimes take credit for trees that are going to be planted anyway (so your money makes no difference). 3. If we plant trees to ‘offset’ our carbon then we are expanding our ecological footprint and increase the amount of land we remove from indigenous peoples. Bear in mind that our transactions with the people in that area might be limited to just the governing or business elite, at the expense of the poorer sections of society. 4. Sometimes carbon offset companies take credit for energy efficiency programs that would have happened anyway. 5. Biofuel programs may just tend to take land from the poor, which in turn may push those poor into more energy intensive lifestyles instead of sustainable ones that they might have been living using that land. 6. That keeping the carbon in the ground is the only known, proven way of keeping the carbon out of the shorter term (thousands of years) carbon cycle in the environment. 7. Carbon offsets are largely a scam to justify society in keeping on extracting more and more fossil fuels.
To the above I would add: 1. Carbon offsets by implementing energy efficiency may just lead to the money saved by energy efficiency being spent on other energy consuming products or processes. 2. Removal of carbon credits from the energy generating market may not completely reduce carbon emissions by the corresponding amount due to price elasticity of supply and demand and the presence of oil, gas and coal purchasers outside of the credits regime. (However, I do believe that carbon credits do have a positive contribution to fossil fuel exploitation reduction.)
There may be other stuff I have missed.
Some links from the mag: http://www.sinkswatch.org/pubs/carbon%20offset.pdf http://www.sinkswatch.org/pubs/Market%20failure.pdf www.carbontradewatch.org/durban/durbandec.html http://www.carbontradewatch.org/pubs/CDMsouthafrica.pdf http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/pdf/document/CarbConv.pdf There are more links that I haven’t put on.
Taunton, GB , 02 Aug 2006
So, as a positive contribution, it might be worth considering Ebico’s Equiclimate scheme which trades in carbon generation allowances: http://www.ebico.co.uk/equiclimate/equiclimate.htm
15 Aug 2006
I’d have to agree with mark (and New Internationalist).
Tree planting is good, but is going to have little or no effect on global carbon balancing. As it is the concentration of carbon that is the problem, it is not much help to know that the tree takes up the CO2 produced by the plane during a lifetime of growth – unless you can find a tree that reaches maturity in the time it takes to fly to wherever you’re going.
On the other hand we have some typical NI overstatement (I stopped reading it some years ago as the negativity was sending me mad). Lots of the offset trees are planted in western countries. Biofuels are grown in the UK and other western countries.
Joe
30 Aug 2006
We don’t fly very often atall, and since we have become aware of just how much damage flying does, we have made the decision not. Easy enough to say if you don’t need to. Read an interesting article in Christian Aids magazine this month where most experts interviewed thought offsetting was maybe just a trendy way of salving our consciences…? We are desperate to go back to Greece sometime and would be very interested to know if anyone has done this without the use of an aeroplane!
Winchester, GB , 19 Sep 2006
I have flown twice in Europe this year and have offset those flights…I am going to look at offsetting all my previous flights too – there aren’t many, and I intend to keep it that way!
Edinburgh, GB , 28 Sep 2006
I have recently visited carbonneutral.com run by the carbonNeutral Company. They dont only offer tree planting as a way to offset or neutralise the carbon from your flight they also have international community projects you can support such as a project in Jamaica which encourages the local hotels and communities to switch to energy efficient lighting, saving them money and cutting CO2 emissions. And in Bhutan the forestry planting project, not only helps to regenerate an environment that was devastated by fire and deforestation, it is part of larger scheme which provides jobs for the local community. I think this is pretty cool as it has a much wider effect as it is helping these communities too. It is easy to do as they have a calculator to work out how much carbon you are resposible for by your flight and then you essentially buy back your carbon (well ok not exactly) and this money goes to either plant trees, to community projects like the ones mentioned above or towards future renewable enery projects. I hope that its as good as it sounds otherwise I will cry if its not!!!
10 Oct 2006
A Rocha is a christian environmental organisation that has set up a scheme planting trees in Ghana and Kenya with long term sustainability as the ethos, both in terms of local employment, and ensuring that the trees aren’t going to be chopped down.
Have a look at www.climatestewards.co.uk
The first thing tho’ is always to reduce, reduce, reduce….
Nottingham, GB , 05 Dec 2007
I heard a comment on “Today in Parliament” that carbon offsetting was the modern day equivalent of “indulgences” (the practice a few centuries ago of people giving money to the church in order to somehow buy less time in purgatory). This sounds uncomfortably close to the truth. Whatever you pay does not really undo the original crime.
Luton, GB , 15 Jul 2008
Not being very sure that carbon-offsetting really is the answer (I agree with Nickd), I am currently picking up aluminium cans lying in the street and making sure they go in the recycling to offset my flight to the Domincan Republic next month (I am taking a group of young people to build houses with Haitian sugar plantation workers living in poverty) – a friend at DoE did the calculation for me and maybe Luton isn’t actually messy enough for me to find 12000 but I hope to have ‘offset’ 10% of the flight before I go.