Not so greener than thou

Although Yolanda and I had fun working out the carbon equivalent cost of taking the train to France when compared with flying, it might sound a bit 'greener than thou'.

This really isn't the case. I have just opened my passport and quickly worked out my airmiles since 2004. I've made about 4 trips to New Zealand, 13 to the US and 2 to Canada. When you factor in the radiative forcing effect, that works out about 121 tonnes of CO2 emissions. This is entirely unacceptable, it's more than my fair share and is why I have quit flying (it's quite an adventure to travel without flying too). It's a bit sad that this outweighs any of the other eco things I have done and perhaps will ever do. Perhaps I need to quickly buy some solar panels and a wind turbine to start offsetting some of this effect. A quick calculation reveals that it might take 60 years to offset it that way. Oh well, I can try!