Green Your Summer Travel
A lot of ink has been spilled on the question of whether driving or flying is better for the environment. The answer, as with many questions of this sort (see for example, our green tip on plastic v. paper), is it all depends–on the context, on your assumptions, on how you go about answering the question. I’ve seen completely opposing answers to this question (such as this one and this one, and I’ve seen numbers that indicate the difference, especially for short flights, is not that great.
Here’s how I would rate your green travel options (from greenest to least green):
- Stay home and do all the fun things you never have an opportunity to do otherwise.
- Travel by train.
- Travel by bus.
- Travel by car (with more than one person in the car).
- Fly and purchase carbon offsets
You can read more about green travel at Grist and Planet Green.
(7/23/09). A recent post on Low Impact Living reviews an online environmental impact calculator for travel, called Trip Footprint. Interesting stuff, although even the numbers their recommendations are based on aren’t foolproof.
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