Buying off your guild, or helping a hand?

I enjoy travelling, I have loved it all my life. The bitter pill is that it is not at all that good for the environment and thus for ourselves and generations to come.

CO2 emissions which we produce while travelling are not limited to the place where we emit them it, unfortunately it homogeneously spreads out over the atmosphere . Its effects on the higher layers of the atmosphere (Troposphere) are therefore always present. The effects of the NOx emissions we produce are often limited to the places where they are emitted and have highest impact in higher layers of the atmosphere. Aircraft produce most NOx in cruise, and let that just be the altitude where they deal most damage since most NOx is produced while the engine is running at cruise condition. In the the case of aviation even water vapour or contrails which are the white stripes you see in the sky, created trough a pressure difference over the wing, are contributing to climate change.

The best solution to reducing the emissions we emit while travelling is not to travel at all, however I realise this is hard for most people. Some companies have come up with seemingly positive initiatives to relieve some of the pressure you put on the planet while travelling for just a few bucks, but how good is it?

When booking my flights with KLM who are listed in the top 3 on the Dow-Jones Sustainability index for 14 years in a row, I can select the option compensate my flight. The money you donate goes to CO2ZERO, a fund which plants trees in Panama, investing in bio-fuels and making the fleet more sustainable. It is a pity that at the moment this is an opt-in option rather than opt-out, however I do think that it is a start. Other airlines which provide services like these are Brussels Airlines, BRA, SAS, Delta, United Airlines and many others. I personally have no experience with the programs of these airlines, but I believe they offer a great alternative if you are looking for airlines who want to show some corporate responsibility.

How much I like the carbon offset feature a lot of airlines do not offer me the opportunity to compensate at all. Again I would rather not fly, but when I do I would like to see that I can reduce my impact as much as possible. It is therefore I stumbled across a website called Trees For All who also compensate your CO2 by planting forests around the world. I used their service a couple of times in order to compensate for car trips and a flight and their correspondence is pretty good. In the end you will know where and how many trees are planted. There are also companies who offer to compensate your emission by reducing emission in third world countries such as the Swiss company myClimate. On the website of Transavia.com the firm Greenseats is promoted, if you fill in your flight number they will calculate your emissions for you and compensate by investing in emission reducing projects in third world countries as well, you can even compensate your meals!

As an engineer I feel that it is good to start the battle against CO2 emissions, however I do not like to have false hopes. A big downside about compensating your flight is that the emissions you release in a couple of hours will take years to be extracted from the atmosphere by the trees you have bought, or projects you have funded. In addition, battling deforestation might not compensate for the NOx or H2O emissions in the stratosphere, it does create habitat for flora and fauna as well as it rinses the air of CO2 as is done in well managed and new growing forests.

All in all I feel that there can be a lot of debate about climate compensation of flights. It is not the perfect solution, however it is a small step forward. Since I created this blog not to lecture on all that is bad I want to say thank you to all who compensate. You guys make a small step, and as long as you do a small good deed, it is always better than doing nothing.

Safe/save travels!

Rinoa