Green travel

[buttercup]

The rise of budget airlines is great for jet setting MoneySavers but not so good for the greenhouse effect and rapidly increasing global warming. However, there are several websites that have started up offering to offset the carbon emissions produced by your travels. These include Climatecare, Co2balance, Carbonneutral, Carbon-clear and Growaforest.

You simply go to the site, enter your flight details and it will calculate the amount of carbon that will your flight will produce. You can then pay to offset this by donating that value to a conservation project. These usually involve planting trees, which absorb more CO2 than they produce. Other projects include solar lighting in schools and financing renewable energy sources in under-developed countries.

It's worth checking a few of the sites to see what price they calculate for your flight or to check out the different projects they offer.



Do it yourself

These companies are not charities and obviously aim to make a profit. If you would rather know that 100% of your money is being used effectively you could plant trees yourself or give some time to a local project conserving woodland in your area.

source - www.moneysaving expert.com

[Bored_Wombat]

Yeah.

The Australian press did a phase of looking at fraud amongst such companies. Certainly it was very common for such companies to not have current credits to sell, and the offsets actually sequester carbon from the atmosphere some years after their purchase.

I'm not sold on planting trees to offset carbon from fossil fuels. They're just not permanent.

[Carl44]

Bored_Wombat;670196 wrote: Yeah.



The Australian press did a phase of looking at fraud amongst such companies. Certainly it was very common for such companies to not have current credits to sell, and the offsets actually sequester carbon from the atmosphere some years after their purchase.



I'm not sold on planting trees to offset carbon from fossil fuels. They're just not permanent.




and in a few million years the trees will have turned into coal thus making more fossil fuel and making the problem worse

[Bored_Wombat]

jimbo;670240 wrote: and in a few million years the trees will have turned into coal thus making more fossil fuel and making the problem worse


Hi Jimbo!

[Singh-Song]

The answer to this issue is obvious- just replace the fuel-burning turbojets we use for airliners today, and replace them with electric turboprops. They could even be solar powered, potentially burning no fuel at all. The technology is proven, has been with us since the Helios round-the-world flight more than twenty years ago- but why hasn't it been used already? The answer is simple- Would people be willing to add another 1/5th time onto their commute? Would residents living near airports be prepared to endure the extra noise, just for the sake of saving the planet for generations to come? I think NOT...

[talkingamoeba]

we want what we want and we want it now, why not accept that travel by plane in the present sense is just too environmentally costly, and stop just as a smoker must stop poluting his body if he wishes to get better. Our planet needs that treatment to get better.

[Bryn Mawr]

talkingamoeba;676902 wrote: we want what we want and we want it now, why not accept that travel by plane in the present sense is just too environmentally costly, and stop just as a smoker must stop poluting his body if he wishes to get better. Our planet needs that treatment to get better.


Primarily because the economy of too many regions is too dependant on air transport. Stop all flights and go cold turkey and we'd be in a depression to make the twenties look like a holiday camp within six months.

[chonsigirl]

Some places are too far away to reach without air travel. If I would have had to drive back and forth to my daughter's wedding, it would have taken 4-6 days one way. It was 5-6 hours by plane. Driving was not an option.