The Carbon Cost of Travel

Part of the reason I haven't been to France in 9 years is the massive carbon cost of flying. Just as a quick reminder: we are in a climate emergency. This emergency is not off in the future - it's happening now, and it's happening everywhere. We need to reduce our carbon emissions dramatically to avoid global catastrophe.

One thing this trip reminded me of is how much I love to travel - but flying is really, really, bad for the climate. Just one roundtrip flight to Europe from California emits up to three times more carbon pollution than the average African citizen produces in an entire year. Travel comes at a serious cost.

The travel blog Tilted Map did a great series on making tourism more sustainable. Anyone who travels and cares about the climate should read it. Here are a few top take-aways, and how I practiced them on this trip:

• Top line: Fly less, and reduce your travel emissions as much as possible.

• If you do need to fly, fly non-stop (the biggest emissions come from take-off and landing), and take an efficient airplane. I found a great non-stop flight with the low-cost airline French Bee, on a super-efficient Airbus 350 -- which, added bonus, wasn't a scary dangerous substandard Boeing plane. (Yay! No doors blown off in flight!)

• After I got to Europe, I only took trains between cities. Luckily, the European train system is amazing, so this wasn't much of a problem.

• Once you've reduced as much as possible, offset the rest. TiltedMap has a very comprehensive post about offsetting - I highly recommend reading it. Basically, you use a calculator to measure the amount of carbon you're emitting and the cost of those emissions, and then you pay that amount into a fund that is either directly reducing emissions or addressing the climate emergency in some tangible way. I used Atmosfair as a one-stop shop to measure and offset for this trip (total cost: $274). In the past, I've also paid for offsets with goldstandard.org. Both org's support projects that address humanitarian needs as well as carbon emissions, and both are highly vetted and reputable.

I love love travel, but it’s increasingly hard for me to justify it. Travel opens your mind, expands your worldview, and increases intercultural understanding.I think it’s really important for young people in particular to travel internationally. But I’m not young anymore, so without a compelling reason I may not go back to Europe again for a while. Which definitely makes me sad.