Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on February 12, 2016
How Far Can We Get Without Flying?
I’m a climate scientist who doesn’t fly. I try to avoid burning fossil fuels, because it’s clear that doing so causes real harm to humans and to nonhumans, today and far into the future. I don’t like harming others, so I don’t fly. Back in 2010, though, I was awash in cognitive dissonance. My awareness of global warming had risen to a fever pitch, but I hadn’t yet made real changes to my daily life. This disconnect made me feel panicked and disempowered.
Hour for hour, there’s no better way to warm the planet than to fly in a plane.
Then one evening in 2011, I gathered my utility bills and did some Internet research. I looked up the amounts of carbon dioxide emitted by burning a gallon of gasoline and a therm (about 100 cubic feet) of natural gas, I found an estimate for emissions from producing the food for a typical American diet and an estimate for generating a kilowatt-hour of electricity in California, and I averaged the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Environmental Protection Agency estimates for CO2 emissions per mile from flying. With these data, I made a basic pie chart of my personal greenhouse gas emissions for 2010.
This picture came as a surprise. I’d assumed that electricity and driving were my largest sources of emissions. Instead, it turned out that the 50,000 miles I’d flown that year (two international and half a dozen domestic flights, typical for postdocs in the sciences who are expected to attend conferences and meetings) utterly dominated my emissions.
-
YES! Infographic
Hour for hour, there’s no better way to warm the planet than to fly in a plane. If you fly coach from Los Angeles to Paris and back, you’ve just emitted 3 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, 10 times what an average Kenyan emits in an entire year. Flying first class doubles these numbers.
However, the total climate impact of planes is likely two to three times greater than the impact from the CO2 emissions alone. This is because planes emit mono-nitrogen oxides into the upper troposphere, form contrails, and seed cirrus clouds with aerosols from fuel combustion. These three effects enhance warming in the short term. (Note that the charts in this article exclude these effects.)
Given the high climate impact, why is it that so many environmentalists still choose to fly so much? I know climate activists who fly a hundred thousand miles per year. I know scientists who fly about as much but “just don’t think about it.” I even have a friend who blogged on the importance of bringing reusable water bottles on flights in order to pre-empt the miniature disposable bottles of water the attendants hand out. Although she saved around 0.04 kilograms of CO2 by refusing the disposable bottle, her flight to Asia emitted more than 4,000 kilograms, equivalent to some 100,000 bottles. I suspect that most people simply don’t know the huge impact of their flying—but I also suspect that many of us are addicted to it. We’ve come to see flying as an inalienable right, a benefit of 21st-century living that we take for granted.
The quantitative estimates of my emissions guided me as I set about resolving the dissonance between my principles and my actions. I began to change my daily life. I began to change myself.
My first change was to start bicycling. I began by biking the 6 miles to work, which turned out to be much more fun than driving (and about as fast). It felt like flying. Those extra few pounds melted off. Statistically speaking, I can expect biking to add a year to my life through reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.
-
YES! Illustration by Jennifer Luxton.
Other moves away from fossil fuels turned out to be satisfying as well. I began growing food, first in the backyard and then in the front, and I discovered that homegrown food tastes far better than anything you can buy. I began composting, an honest and philosophical practice. I tried vegetarianism and found that I prefer it to eating meat; I have more energy, and food somehow tastes better. I began keeping bees and chickens, planting fruit trees, rescuing discarded food, reusing greywater, and helping others in my community do the same.I stopped taking food, water, air, fuel, electricity, clothing, community, and biodiversity for granted. I became grateful for every moment and more aware of how my thoughts and actions in this moment connect to other moments and to other beings. I began to experience that everyday things are miracles: an avocado, a frame of honeycomb crowded with bees, a conversation with my son. Now, I feel more connected to the world around me, and I see that fossil fuels actually stood in the way of realizing those connections. If you take one idea from this article, let it be this: Life without fossil fuels is fun and satisfying, and this is the best reason to change.
But none of these changes had the quantitative impact of quitting flying. By 2013, my annual emissions had fallen well below the global mean.
I experienced a lot of social pressure to fly, so it took me three years to quit.
I experienced a lot of social pressure to fly, so it took me three years to quit. Not flying for vacations was relatively easy. I live in California, and my wife and I love backpacking. We drive on waste vegetable oil, but even normal cars are better than flying. Four people on a plane produce 10 to 20 times as much CO2 as those same people driving a 25 to 50 mpg car the same distance.
My wife and I drive 2,000 veggie oil miles to Illinois each year to visit our parents. Along the way, we sleep under the stars in the Utah wilderness. This is adventure travel, the opposite of fast travel, and it has deepened my relationship with my parents. After such a journey, I more easily see how precious my time with them is.
Not flying is an ongoing challenge as I progress in my scientific career, but I’m finding that I can thrive by doing good work and making the most of regional conferences and teleconferencing. Not flying does hold back my career to some extent, but I accept this, and I expect the social climate to change as more scientists stop flying.
-
- YES! Infographic
In today’s world, we’re still socially rewarded for burning fossil fuels. We equate frequent flying with success; we rack up our “miles.” This is backward: Burning fossil fuels does real harm to the biosphere, to our children, and to countless generations—and it should, therefore, be regarded as socially unacceptable.
In the post-carbon future, it’s unlikely that there will be commercial plane travel on today’s scale. Biofuel is currently the only petroleum substitute suitable for commercial flight. In practice, this means waste vegetable oil, but there isn’t enough to go around. In 2010, the world produced 216 million gallons of jet fuel per day but only about half as much vegetable oil, much of which is eaten; leftover oil from fryers is already in high demand. This suggests that even if we were to squander our limited biofuel on planes, only the ultra-rich would be able to afford them.
Instead, chances are that we’ll live nearer to our friends and loved ones, and we won’t be expected to travel so far for work. Those both seem like good things to me.
With the world population approaching 8 billion, my reduction obviously can’t solve global warming. But by changing ourselves in more than merely incremental ways, I believe we contribute to opening social and political space for large-scale change. We tell a new story by changing how we live.
36 Comments on "How Far Can We Get Without Flying?"
Davy on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 6:05 am
I look forward to the day mass air travel is a thing of the past. This is not because of the climate. If you want to save the climate we need to immediately decimate the human race and her workshops of destruction. That is the only way to reduce emissions enough to avoid runaway climate change. This is going to happen anyway by nature’s hand, just not now but down the road once our world has been destroyed and transformed in Nature’s evolutionary processes. We are Nature’s hand maiden of extinction. This extinction process maybe won’t be total but most likely to the brink. I am sure without a moderate climate which is the trend, modern human civilization is toast. In the mean time I would like to see mass air travel to stop because I want a localized world of authenticity. Local is authentic period. I would like trips to actually be efforts like they used to be when travel took days, weeks, or months by slow trains, animals, and or sails. What would be even better than no planes would be no cars. I would like to not go places and remain where I am as it should be.
Hello on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 6:29 am
Whether it gets burned for flying or burned for something else. It doesn’t matter. It’ll get burned no matter.
I had a meeting with en economic development board the other day. They wanted to help me grow my business. When I told them I’m more interested in steady state than growth, you should have seen the look on their faces.
baha on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 6:46 am
This guy is inside my head. I went thru this same progression 10 years ago. Now I install solar and my carbon footprint is headed to zero. This is bottom up thinking. When we all reach this point the burning will stop.
ghung on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 8:28 am
Hello said; “I had a meeting with en economic development board the other day. They wanted to help me grow my business.”
Do they know you’re a racist asshole?
goat2055 on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 9:17 am
Did the Wright Brothers have the Wrong idea after all?
paulo1 on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 9:22 am
My wife and I quit flying 17 years ago and now it isn’t even a consideration. This, coming from someone who flew for a living. I am the only one of my friends who does not take tropical vacations, yearly. Hell, one buddy flew to Mauritous in order to Kayak. Most of my friends have mentally organized their retirement around travel…..Europe, Mexico in the winter, may s.e. Asia. Oh well, I just let it go because they are still my friends no matter what.
What I don’t get are the trips as medicine. My sister, when she is feeling mid-winter down, just has to go to Maui and swim. It’s like its a cure-all. Oh well, I put on a raincoat and take the dog for a walk. Plan to build a wood-fired sauna this year….maybe I’ll put up some plastic covered beach posters and build a cooler into the wall that simply hangs outside.
ghung on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 10:39 am
Paulo said; “….maybe I’ll put up some plastic covered beach posters and build a cooler into the wall that simply hangs outside.”
At least plastic sequesters carbon, sort of 😉 the last time I flew was X-mas 1996. It was awful, and I have no need or desire to fly again, for all the good it’ll do. I have inlaws who think nothing of flying every week; back and forth to their horse farm in KY, or their yacht in S.Florida. They’re basically great people in total denial (saw my recycle bin and said “Oh! You’re one of THOSE!”) Jeez.
We’re fucked.
paulo1 on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 11:19 am
“Oh, you’re one of those”..ha
We have this ‘thing’ in the nearby village called “The Share Shed”. It is located right next to the recycling bins, and local volunteers look after it in shifts. My wife is dropping off a micro-wave as I write this. There are a lot of folks around here with very little and are very pleased to trade/share stuff which otherwise would have gone into the landfill. I paid $45 for the micro-wave 12 years ago, when our current house was our weekend cabin. It had unequal feet that required shims, and if you nuked something for longer than 10 minutes it would shut down for awhile. It’ll heat and defrost stuff just fine so somebody’ll use it. The new one we picked up was from Costco for a whopping $99. I remember the first micro-wave I ever saw was in 1980. It was an Amana, and I think the ‘trendy’ couple paid $700 for it back then!! It was silver and the size of an electric range. You were not supposed to stand too close to it, either. How things have changed.
Davy on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 11:26 am
Great Idea Paulo “The Share Shed”. I will add that to my prep notes.
GregT on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 11:39 am
“Oh! You’re one of THOSE!”
When I opted out my parents couldn’t understand why I wanted to live the “hunter/gatherer” lifestyle.
No point in banging one’s head against back walls.
Apneaman on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 11:54 am
“In today’s world, we’re still socially rewarded for burning fossil fuels.”
Socially and personally – that’s why it will never stop. Apes are not driving their own buses – their limbic system is.
MEGACANCER ~ Exploring the pathology of industrial civilization.
Singular Purpose – Reward
“The manner in which the brain makes us consider rewards, winning, competition and dangers has been instilled over millions of years of evolution. Obtaining rewards in the form of food, avoiding danger and reaching an elevated position in the dominance hierarchy were key to survival. Our minds try to maximize energy returns to our behavior subconsciously, beyond our conscious thought or observation. Why do people drive around parking lots looking for the closest parking spot to the entrance of a building while wasting gasoline? Because there is an energy conserving algorithm in human brains that makes them take the most direct path. If a reward in the wild were twenty meters away, but our primitive Homo sapiens always took an extra thirty meters to arrive at the reward, how much net energy would be obtained? Would another person obtain the reward first? Most people think it was free will that made them take the shortest path possible, but it was decided for them. We are preoccupied with rewards, rewards to our portfolios, academic awards, sports awards, social rewards, material rewards and so on, without the least concern for the damage we are creating around us. We are a reward seeking automatons. The algorithms in our brains, when coupled with the newly emerged information and tool making capabilities of System II, have resulted in a cancerous explosion, and few seem to care or are unwilling to alter their evolved behaviors.”
more
http://megacancer.com/2016/02/12/singular-purpose-reward/
“We are a reward seeking automatons.”
“We are a reward seeking automatons.”
“We are a reward seeking automatons.”
sunweb on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 12:47 pm
I don’t fly, don’t like it. I remember back in the 1970s, one of the renewable energy advocates joked that probably the last gallon of gas would be used up flying to a conference on conservation.
sunweb on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 12:48 pm
Carbon foot print at zero? Check out these video.
All the human-made things in our world have an industrial history. Behind the computer, the T-shirt, the vacuum cleaner is an industrial infrastructure fired by energy (fossil fuels mainly). Each component of our car or refrigerator has an industrial history. Mainly unseen and out of mind, this global industrial infrastructure touches every aspect of our lives. It pervades our daily living from the articles it produces, to its effect on the economy and employment, as well as its effects on the environment.
Solar and wind energy collecting devices have an industrial history. It is important to understand the industrial infrastructure underwritten by fossil fuels and the environmental results for the components of the solar energy collecting devices so we don’t designate them with false labels such as green, renewable or sustainable.
This is an essay challenging ‘business as usual’. If we teach people that these solar devices are the future of energy without teaching the whole system, we mislead, misinform and create false hopes and beliefs.
I have provided both charts and videos from the industries themselves for the solar cells, modules, aluminum from ore, aluminum from recycling, aluminum extrusion, inverters, batteries and copper.
Please note each piece of machinery you see in each of the videos has its own industrial interconnection and history.
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/2015/04/solar-devices-industrial-infrastructure.html
Plantagenet on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 1:40 pm
I congratulate the author on stopping flying to remove the largest source of CO2 emissions in his life.
Now he needs to remove the second and third biggest sources of CO2 emissions in his life—food and heat.
As a wealthy westerner he is still emitting far too much CO2 compared to people in the rest of the world.
Cheers!
Apneaman on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 2:29 pm
Planty STFU you stupid hypocritical cunt. You know if your husband beat you, I would not blame him in the least. I would congratulate him.
PracticalMaina on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 2:49 pm
Heat is decently easy, insulate the crap outta your home, eliminate most air leaks, especially air escaping vertically out of your attic and cold basement infiltration. Firewood is carbon neutral other than the small amount of gasoline chainsaw will consume. Eat locally and avoid industrial beef and you would be doing much better than most of North America.
Apneaman I thought Canadians were easy going outside of the hockey rink.
Apneaman on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 3:10 pm
I was born in the rink, PM. Most of the other Canadians are nice and polite all the time except for the fact that they are mindless consumer zombies shopping themselves to extinction. Planty is not real. Don’t believe everything you read on the intertubes;)
Apneaman on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 3:45 pm
AGW disrupting the jet set privileged folks African safari vacations this year.
Major Wildfire Outbreak in Central and Western Africa as Drought, Hunger Grow More Widespread
“The major news organizations haven’t picked it up yet, but there’s a massive wildfire outbreak now ongoing over Central and Western Africa. These wildfires are plainly visible in the NASA/MODIS satellite shot — covering about a 1,400 mile swath stretching from the Ivory Coast, through Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon and on across the Central African Republic, the Congo, and Gabon.”
“Smoke from these fires is extremely widespread — stretching over almost all of Western and Central Africa, blanketing parts of Southern Africa and ghosting on out over the Southern Atlantic Ocean. Together with these massive fires we have what appears to be a rather significant CO2 plume showing up in the Coperinicus monitoring system (see below). It’s a signature reminiscent of the amazing Indonesian wildfires that, during a few weeks of the Fall of 2015, matched the CO2 emission of Germany. The satellite representation of these fires is so strong that it’s difficult to believe that no news of the fires has hit the mainstream media. But, so far, there hasn’t even been a peep.”
http://robertscribbler.com/2016/02/11/major-wildfire-outbreak-in-central-and-western-africa-as-drought-hunger-grow-more-widespread/
Anonymous on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 3:54 pm
If flying was not so heavily subsidized, people simply would not fly, except in rare instances. its that simply. Everything from the high-tech jets themselves to the cost of fuel, airports-all heavily subsidized throughout most western nations. In the american ‘homelands’ both driving AND flying, are massively subsidized and underwritten. Not just in dollar terms, but in terms of the resources america steals from the world to support their bloated military and shop on credit lifestyles. Casual flight is, in other words, way too cheap for the damage it does.
Its funny that in this entire article, neither ocean going ships, OR trains, both magnitudes of orders more efficient and cost effective than flying, did not get a single mention.
Boat on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 5:24 pm
apeman,
You discount most tech that is more efficient and discount tech that is growing to scale. Now your touting ships and trains? Were all dead anyway.
Go Speed Racer on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 5:53 pm
Article is wrong. Author is a Luddite. You get better fuel economy as seat-miles-per-gallon, much better economy than a car.
Plus the jet is hauling all that cargo under the passengers feet.
And the stewardesses serving you drinks, look hot in those skimpy uniforms. And they won’t hire fat ones cause they burn up more jet fuel.
makati1 on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 6:49 pm
Go Speed, you are correct. Flying uses less oil per mile than a car. “100 miles per gallon per person” for a 747. My annual trip to the States takes about 250 gallons of jet fuel. That is about 1/4 of what I used to burn annually when I had a car.
I did not read this chest thumping brag, but I bet he never took into account the energy/oil cost to make the stuff he still uses regularly. Most of the oil/energy is used to build and maintain a car, not what it burns to move it. That is just extra. Ditto for all of the things he uses/consumes.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/question192.htm
Apneaman on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 7:01 pm
Boat, you’re right – apes are going bye bye no matter what. It wasn’t me who mentioned ships and trains it was “Anonymous”. You so fucking dumb that you can’t even tell the difference between commenters? Both our handles start with the letter “A”. That’s all it takes to confuse you eh? This is not the first time you have argued with the wrong commenter – happens daily with you king dopy. Seriously, I have had many dogs that were sharper than you.
GregT on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 7:12 pm
Planter,
“Now he needs to remove the second and third biggest sources of CO2 emissions in his life—food and heat.”
Just because 95% of the food in Alaska is imported from far away places (like California where the author lives), and you wouldn’t survive the winter without heat, does not mean that everybody else has made the same poor choices as you have planter.
GregT on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 7:15 pm
Boat,
We’re all dead anyway. Not; “Were all dead anyway”.
Tom S on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 7:40 pm
Anon:
“Its funny that in this entire article, neither ocean going ships, OR trains, both magnitudes of orders more efficient and cost effective than flying,”
Ocean going ships are less fuel efficient than flying, for passengers. Although ships are far more fuel efficient than airplanes, this is counteracted by the enormous space and weight requirements on cruise ships per passenger for things like cabins, casinos, swimming pools, etc. A typical cruise ship has more than 2,000 sq feet of floor space per passenger, compared to about 12 sq feet per passenger in a jumbo jet. Also, a cruise ship has more than 1,000 gallons of water per passenger in swimming pools, etc. Also, ships are less fuel efficient the faster they go, and most cruise ships have a cruising speed of 25 knots or so.
If people were willing to pack in like sardines on to a ship (as they do on an airplane) and travel at 8 knots on a ship, then the fuel efficiency of traveling by ship would be more than 200x better. As it stands, people demand 2,000 sq feet of space and want to travel at 30 knots when they travel on a ship, so fuel efficiency per passenger is about 1/3rd what they would achieve by flying.
-Tom S
Boat on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 7:47 pm
apeman,
Let’s consider dumb. You are very angry with consumers and especially angry with Americans and only death awaits all of mankind soon. Until your death you admittedly owe your living and your future to a carbon based economy. Some might call the hypocrisy comes from an unhinged base. PS Canada uses more energy per capita than the US.
GregT on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 7:56 pm
“Some might call the hypocrisy comes from an unhinged base.”
Anyone care to take a stab at translating the above into english?
Apneaman on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 8:40 pm
Boat, angry? I’m laughing my ass off everyday at this absurd species. Sometimes, I have to stop halfway through writing a comment to wipe the tears out of my eyes because I’m thinking how some small minded retard like you will be all tied up in mental knots trying to process it. Obviously, your CPU is in overclock mode and your circuits are frying, but you still don’t get it do ya Texas? You’re an absurd little pre programmed suicidal ape boat – one of 7.4 billion absurd little apes who are in control of absolutely nothing. We will be gone before this century is out. It’s not a moral argument.
Anonymous on Fri, 12th Feb 2016 11:38 pm
Tom:
I dont consider luxury cruise liners the yardstick by which to measure passenger ship efficiency. That’s like comparing a armored humvee to a prius and claiming pretty much every car is a armored hum-vee. Nor is packing people on a ship shoulder to shoulder standing room only what I had in mind either. So spare me the fallacy of the excluded middle ok? Ships are, and can be, efficient people movers. Some ships, (cruise ships), can and are, fairly inefficient in terms of space and energy utilization. Nor is it necessary to building moderen day equivelnts of these either:
http://americancivilwarphotographs.blogspot.ca/2012/06/african-slave-ships.html
Practicalmaina on Sat, 13th Feb 2016 7:46 am
Something the article did not mention, I think both air and sea travel are going to become more dangerous despite technology because of increased frequency, intensity and unpredictability of large storms.
joe on Sat, 13th Feb 2016 9:18 am
The post industrial waste world we call ‘the services economy’ lives on tourism and cheap flights. When you stop making cars to sell to farmers because all the farms belong to Big Food and you have passed the point of no return for an aging population. There is only ‘services’ to provide. From home shopping to home cleaning, SeanT will give you insanity! But flying is the backbone of the advanced world. Without flying, services cant be served, its hard to provide year round out of season fruits and veg without planes and in the end people will not wake up. Whats coming will happen organically, those who understand it, will simply be blessed with the knowledge that it was always out of their control, those that dont will fight and fail. Natural selection will decide if anything like civilisation exists in 100 years, dont be guilty of hubris and think you have any REAL say.
John Orr on Sat, 13th Feb 2016 5:51 pm
What a stupid article, hands up u lot out of 32 commentators who hasn’t taken a flight????
antaris on Sat, 13th Feb 2016 6:34 pm
J.O. We all have. But one day most won’t and that may not be far off.
Apneaman on Sat, 13th Feb 2016 8:45 pm
John Orr, please explain how anyone taking flights makes anything the author presents less true?
If 32 commenters stated that cold blooded murder is wrong almost everyone would agree they are correct. If those 32 commenters were cold blooded murders does that mean their statement is no longer correct?
Apneaman on Sun, 14th Feb 2016 3:27 am
Is Masturbation Destroying The Climate?
THE ANSWER IS YES!
http://stopmasturbationnow.org/science/is-masturbation-destroying-the-climate/