With the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays soon upon us, many of us Riderwood residents will be traveling by air to visit loved ones.
My husband and I are part of this group. And that’s got me thinking about the environmental impact of our upcoming trip to the west coast.
It’s well-known that air travel is harmful to our climate. Per passenger mile, commercial air travel results in about 53.3 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted into the atmosphere. Globally, air travel accounts for more than 2% of total global greenhouse emissions annually, according to the International Energy Agency.
Is there anything we air travelers can do to lessen the climate impact of our upcoming travels?
I thought about purchasing carbon offsets for our flights. This a commonly used approach, by which flyers purchase ‘credits.’ These credits ‘offset’ the impact of a flight by funding a project that does the opposite—reducing or removing carbon from the atmosphere. In other words, the harm of the flight is ‘canceled out’ by positive climate impacts elsewhere.
Many businesses have sprung up over the last couple of decades to sell offsets to climate-conscious flyers. These companies presumably connect passengers with reforestation efforts, renewable energy projects, and programs that capture methane from landfills and increase energy efficiency.
Sounds good. But, according to climate experts who study carbon offsets, they are, more likely than not, a waste of money. “It creates a fiction that you can fly and emit greenhouse gases and just pay for these cheap credits and erase your impact,” says Dr. Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project at the University of California—Berkeley.
In order for one’s purchased carbon offsets to actually cancel out the negative climate impact of flying, the project funded by those offsets must be verifiable, immediate, and durable, says John Sterman, director of MIT’s Carbon Pathways Project. But since it’s very difficult to meet all these criteria, he explains, carbon offset programs “are fooling people.”
For instance, how much carbon is captured when a tree is planted? And what if that tree burns later in a fire, releasing carbon? And maybe a particular reforestation project would take place anyway, regardless of whether offsets were purchased to fund it? Or what if the seller claims that offsets purchased fund the protection of a forest that was not threatened anyway?
“Most credits don’t represent the amount of emissions reductions that they claim,” maintains Haya. “Other credits have had no measurable climate benefit at all.”
Many in the airline industry have come to agree that carbon offsets are ineffective in lessening air travel’s climate impact. Both Delta Airlines and United are now investing in efforts to develop and expand the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
SAF is low-carbon jet fuel made from renewable or waste-derived sources, which can be blended with conventional jet fuel to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. SAF can be made from used cooking oil, agricultural and forestry residue, and municipal solid waste. Currently, Trump tariffs and policy uncertainty regarding tax credits have negatively affected the advance of SAF programs by increasing production costs, causing investment delays, and creating supply chain disruptions.
So What’s a Traveler to Do?
· Fly less. While many of us love to travel, we should consider the example of some environmental leaders who have publicly declared that they are forgoing air travel for vacations and meetings, and are limiting their air travel to only the most important trips—to be with loved ones
· Fly economy. Because premium and business seats take up more space, passengers in first and business classes account for up to four times the emissions of passengers in the back of the plane.
· Take direct flights whenever possible. Take-offs and landings generate a significant portion of the emissions of air travel, so one long flight is usually better than two or more shorter flights.
· If you’ve purchased carbon offsets in the past, consider, in the future, instead supporting effective climate action. You might instead, use those funds to install solar panels on your home. Or make a donation to an effective climate action organization.
· Consider other means of travel. Train travel is most often the least carbon-polluting, followed by car travel. And of course electric car travel is the most climate-friendly way to travel by car. The more passengers traveling together in the same vehicle, rather than two or more cars, the better.
· Follow the advice of Dr. Lauren Gifford, associate director of the Soil Carbon Solutions Center at Colorado State University: “Vote. Tell your representatives that solving the climate crisis matters to you.” She adds that carbon offsets are essentially a permit to pay to pollute, when what we need to do is not pollute.