I hate flying. And yet, my wife and I will soon be taking a flight on a Boeing 737-Max-9, from Virginia to the West Coast and back.
To get in the right mood for the flight, I’m going to calculate just how much this adds to my carbon footprint for the year. And then start on the path to doing some penance for it. If that’s even feasible.
A ton of additional C02
The only rational way to do that is to allocate the total fuel consumption for the flight on a per-passenger basis.
Here’s the C02 calculation for this trip, based on the Boeing 737-Max-9 model, which burns just over 10 pounds of fuel per mile, and has 144 seats, (per this table in Wikipedia).
Given that our current household carbon footprint is about 6 tons C02 annually, that’s quite a bit.
That said, if we drove, we’d use just about 100 gallons of gasoline (for the somewhat longer round-trip road distance of 5350 miles, divided by the EPA 54 MPG in my wife’s PriusPrime). In round numbers, that would result in one ton of C02 emissions.
Amtrak? Last time I looked, I think they got something like 45 passenger-miles per gallon on intercity rail travel. That, due to low load factors (i.e., nobody travels by train). So that’s less efficient than flying, assuming you allocate total fuel consumption on a per-passenger basis.
The bottom line is that traveling that many miles is going to take a lot of fossil fuel, no matter how you do it. The impact of air travel isn’t due to low miles-per-gallon, it’s mostly due to letting you travel vast distances conveniently.
There is a separate issue for air travel, in that it might have more global warming impact than you would guess, just from the C02 emissions. This, owing to the release of C02 and water vapor directly into the stratosphere. I haven’t looked at that issue for some time, so I’m not sure where the research stands on that. For now, I’m ignoring it.
The Selling of Indulgences
Oddly, when I use on-line calculators, most of them seem to show a much higher amount of C02 emissions. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that most of those sites are trying to sell me carbon offsets?
If the carbon footprint of the trip is so bothersome, why don’t I just buy some carbon offsets? From the same people who are already in the business of exaggerating my guilt over the trip in the first place?
There’s a short answer and a long answer.
The short answer is that most carbon offsets do not result in additionality. That is, your decision to purchase a carbon offset does not, in fact, result in any additional reduction in C02 emissions. From the standpoint of total C02 emissions, it’s not intrinsically different from flushing your money down the toilet.
The longer answer is that while some offsets might truly have additionality, it’s really hard to tell that with any confidence.
That’s mostly because carbon offset retailers will do just about everything BUT clarify whether or not the money spent on their offsets does reduce C02 emissions below what they would otherwise be. My most recent example being an offer from my electric company that, upon inspection, was an opportunity for me to pay them more for my electricity. Full stop. Nothing else would happen. Other than that maybe I’d feel better about the electricity I used (Post #1590).
The upshot with carbon offsets is that it’s really easy to pay money that eases your guilty conscience, but doesn’t actually do anything.
The final thing I dislike about carbon offsets is that it’s completely and totally illogical to link them to any other action you have taken. Here, I’m supposed to buy them in response to taking this flight. I’m “offsetting” the carbon emissions from that flight.
But if you think about that even a little bit, that’s essentially totally crazy. If I really thought that carbon offsets worked, and I were really interested in doing my bit to restrain global warming, I ought to be buying them day-in, day-out.
So they really are marketed based on guilt, not based on logic. Logically, there’s no link whatsoever between the amount of C02 I generate by flying, and the amount of carbon offsets I should be willing to buy. They are two completely separate decisions.
Conclusion
Somewhere, I did a completely writeup of this issue of carbon offsets, starting with the “green tags” (Renewable Energy Certificates) created by electrical generation via renewable energy. But, for some reason, that’s not posted on this website. So I need to dig that up, if I can, and start from there.
In any case, I’m going to take this trip as the opportunity to revisit my prior research on carbon offsets, and see if I can find any that I think are worth buying. That is, carbon offsets with true and permanent additionality.
If I find some, I’ll put my money where my mouth is. And report that purchase here.
