Making Air Travel Greener




I just completed a 30-day trip around the world to attend University of Central Asia's graduation and to visit family in the U.S.  I traveled from Jakarta to Kyrgyzstan (via Istanbul) to the U.S. and back to Jakarta again.

It was a super trip, but I calculated that the ten flights I took this past month (a distance of over 30,000 kilometers) released a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  Just my individual contribution alone amounted to about 11,000 kg of greenhouse gases.  That's not good for the environment at all, especially when we are facing the dire effects of climate change.

What's the best solution to this problem?  Not traveling by air, of course.  However, unfortunately, I live far away from my family and economic necessity requires me to hold my current job, until I find a position closer to loved ones, so air travel is an environmental evil I really cannot avoid.  So, what to do?

In my case, I have chosen to do something more than wring my hands in dismay. It's not a perfect answer, but for those of us who must utilize air travel, there is a way to counteract the effects of that travel:  carbon offsets.




 

In my case, I have chosen the German company, Atmosfair.  Their website helps you calculate the amount of greenhouse gas your individual air travel has released into the atmosphere. You then can pay to offset that amount of emission by donating to the projects that Atmosfair manages.  These projects help reduce the amount of harmful pollution released into the atmosphere and provide concrete benefits to people in developing nations.




My donation provided climate protection by furnishing efficient stove systems to four families in Nigeria, by creating enough electricity generation from mustard seed crop residues in India to provide 14 households with one year of renewable energy, and by constructing a biogas stove unit for a household in Kenya.  Yes, it's better not to travel by air, but if one chooses to do so, this help changes one's action from a total negative to an act that is more ethically-neutral and something that helps mitigate the environmental damage caused--and it helps improve the quality of life for families around the world. If everyone who could afford to utilized carbon offsets, the planet would be a somewhat better place, so I think it's something air travelers should consider doing every time they fly.

Atmosfair is an excellent company that operates its projects according to global standards for carbon offsets--I like using them because I can choose which projects my donation is used for.  However, there are several responsible organizations which are also excellent at this task for you to choose from.

Air travel isn't the only mode of transportation where you can use carbon offsets. I don't own a car in Jakarta, but travel using Gojek cars (similar to Uber).  Every time I use Gojek, I pay for a carbon offset that goes toward planting trees in rural Indonesia where deforestation is an issue.  So, even if you are not an air traveler, you can offset your carbon usage.

Again, I emphasize that reducing carbon-based travel is the best means of fighting climate change.  But, when one doesn't use clean modes of transportation, then purchasing carbon offsets makes your choice less environmentally unacceptable.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Killing Fields Museum: Siem Reap

Image
In an earlier post here, I showed the Choeung Ek Genocide Center, the Cambodian Killing Fields near Phnom Penh. While that was the largest of the Killing Fields during the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge reign of terror, it was certainly not the only one in the nation.  There are approximately 100 Killing Field sites that have been identified throughout Cambodia where approximately 1.7 million people were murdered--an astonishing 21% of the nation's population at that time. When I finished visiting the Angkor Wat temple complex, I made a request of my driver that we stop at the Siem Reap Museum, near the site of the main Killing Field at Cambodia's 2nd largest city.  He seemed surprised that after exploring the marvels of human creativity, spirituality and achievement at Angkor Wat I would would want to visit on the same day a place that recorded the depths of human depravity.  I don't think anyone visits this museum anymore.  The woman in the ticket booth was reclining on a h...
Read more

Ta Prohm: "The Tree Temple"

Image
  Ta Prohm Temple is definitely my favorite temple beyond main Angkor Wat.  When the entire archeological complex was "discovered" by the French in the 19th Century, most of it was in ruins and they embarked on a decades-long restoration project.  Though the French are no longer in charge of Cambodia, constant restoration efforts are continuing at the Angkor complex to make sure the temples survive into the next decades. The French made a brilliant decision when they started their restoration to keep one of the temples in the semi-ruined state that they found the entire site.  They chose Ta Prohm to keep in a semi-ruined state, though some restoration is constantly done there, just to keep the structures from completely falling down. Ta Prohm is somewhat unique also, in that, while parts of it served as a temple, the majority of the structure served as a monastery and has a distinctive design as opposed to what one would find at more-standard temples.    Ta...
Read more

You Can Learn Much About Red State Americans at Fort Cody

Image
  Earlier in my U.S. trip, I visited my son in North Platte, Nebraska.  It's the reddest, Trumpiest part of a very red state.  And during my visit I stopped at Fort Cody, a fake U.S. Army fort built in the 1960s to lure tourists off the newly-built superhighways as they traveled to vacation destinations out in the Western U.S. like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone Park. That's why you display the two headed calf that was born on a farm in Nebraska in the 1940s, then stuffed after it died having lived only three days. This kind of oddity would be advertised as something to draw curious tourists off the highway to buy the souvenirs in your tourist attraction.  As I visited Fort Cody, the fake Army fort, I realized that this "tourist trap" was exclusively designed for Red-State, MAGA Trumpists and totally reflects their values and mental picture of what America is and should be.  Luckily, you don't have to visit Fort Cody, but I can interpret it for you and show yo...
Read more