We all eat and drink, buy goods and services, and most of us travel in cars. However, not everyone flies, whereas others are frequent flyers. Plane travel will account for most of the difference between high and low greenhouse gas emitters.
So how much greenhouse gas is produced by flying?
I calculated per person emissions for the Sydney to London route (return about 35,000 km) using three Australian online calculators. The results ranged from Carbon neutral’s 11.61 tonnes, to Greenfleet’s 12.85 tonnes, to the ACF Greenhome’s 17.1 tonnes.
Australia’s per capita emissions are 28 tonnes (at 2004 levels) — the highest in the world — of which only 0.45 tonnes is for domestic and international flights. Although the average is low, because many people don’t fly, just one long haul return flight will blow your greenhouse budget — as it did ours!
Using ACF Greenhome, I calculated our annual greenhouse emissions (without flights) as 13.5 t for Hilary, 7.0 t for Becky and 12.4 t for me
Last year, we all flew to London for Hilary’s Dad’s 80th birthday, thus adding 17 t of greenhouse emissions (ACF figures) to each of our budgets, more than the total of all our emissions from all other sources!
So, although international aviation contributes only a small percentage of the total world production of greenhouse gases, at the personal level it adds a huge amount.
We live in a big country a long way from the rest of the world, and plane travel is the most polluting form of transport, so aviation is a difficult greenhouse issue for Australians.
There are options. Work flights should be scrutinised to ensure they are essential; could the task be done via a video conference or phone hook up? Short flights, eg Sydney to Canberra, can be done by train or bus, as Hilary now tries to do.
For overseas holidays, flights are hard to avoid. However, the planet can’t support us all having an annual long haul holidays, so why not try short haul destinations, such as New Zealand, Norfolk Island, or Bali. Even better, why not holiday domestically, at least on alternate years, and travel by bus or train?
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