
Carbon calculator: taking one flight emits as much as many people do in a year - robin_reala
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/jul/19/carbon-calculator-how-taking-one-flight-emits-as-much-as-many-people-do-in-a-year
======
spodek
Learning information like this finally led me to take responsibility for my
actions that affected others. I challenged myself to go one year without
flying. Like everyone, I have family all over and earning money meant flying.
Now I'm in year 4 and it's one of the best choices I've made.

After a few months of transition, figuring out how to resolve the challenges,
I changed from expecting to be on a flight on day 366 to going for another
year, no longer out of obligation but because of the increased role of
community, greater adventure, discovery, and all the values I attributed to
flying but that I could create more when challenged on my own.

I don't think that flying is bad. I love traveling. But the headlines on
climate are irrefutable and I refuse to claim I'm not responsible for my
choices that hurt others, especially for my recreation. Planes aren't going to
fly anyway. They respond to people paying. One plane may bring me to my
relatives, but flying in general disperses them in the first place, leading to
less time with them. At some point I had to rip off the band aid and switch
from accommodating a lifestyle of scattered community with rare actual eye
contact, hugs, and touch to getting closer to the people close to me.

Among other transitions, last summer I learned to sail to get off North
America. I've taken the train across the country and back. I've met as diverse
people and done as adventurous things. I used to say I expect to fly some day
again, but the longer I don't fly, the less I expect to. Who knows?

People always ask my distribution of family and sources of income. I had to
solve my problems for my life but your life is different so my solutions won't
apply. The only meaningful answers I can give to something I think you can
only learn experientially is that you can do it too and if you do, the reasons
for not flying will override the reasons to fly. You'll be glad you did. I
don't know if this will make sense or resonate, but the longer I go without
flying the more people talking about flying sounds like people talking about
heroin.

I wrote a piece in Inc at the end of the first year, which I think captured
some of the joy to that point, but I've discovered and created more since then
[https://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/365-days-without-
flying.ht...](https://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/365-days-without-flying.html).

~~~
Udik
> the headlines on climate are irrefutable

That would be a first for journalism in its long history. Why can't people
accept that headlines on climate are as clickbaity as headlines on just
anything else?

Edit: also being downvoted for pointing out that newspapers headlines are
clickbaity is a first :)

~~~
Dumblydorr
The headlines may be faulty, but the broader point is climate is rapidly
changing and every action we take is one less drop in the bucket.

~~~
Udik
I agree, there's a lot of solid science, confirmed by what we're measuring
year after year. Climate change is happening and CO2 emissions are a major
cause, or the only one.

But we should not underestimate the power of a decades-long daily stream of
clickbaity headlines on the same topic, all skewed in the same direction- the
catastrophic one, the one that spreads fear and incites indignation. Nobody is
immune to it, not even scientists are.

~~~
robin_reala
Not the only one by a long shot. Methane (from cattle and melting permafrost)
is a dramatically worse greenhouse gas than CO2.

------
lelima
"Taking one return flight generates more CO2 than citizens of some countries
produce in a year" (Uganda or Somalia -in article)

In Somalia 29.89 % of the people have access to electricity[1], so an average
person in develop countries consume 10xxx% more electricity per year than
"citizens in some countries".

We can keep it going with many more metrics, is clearly a click bait.

I might be wrong but we could use better comparison in order to make a point.

[1]:[https://tradingeconomics.com/somalia/access-to-
electricity-p...](https://tradingeconomics.com/somalia/access-to-electricity-
percent-of-population-wb-data.html)

------
MauranKilom
This was my conclusion too while using one of those calculators. One year of
eating "normal" amounts of meat instead of being a vegetarian has about as
much CO2 equivalent impact as one flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

I'm still trying to reduce meat consumption (and choose e.g. chicken over
beef) but going on holiday e.g. via train instead of by plane is way more
ecologically impactful than becoming 100% vegan...

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yread
Flying consumes around 2-3 litres of fuel/100km so it's about twice as
efficient as driving the distance alone in a car. Problem is that too many
people want to (and can) go to the other end of the world too often.

~~~
MauranKilom
It's not really that linear because taking off and landing both consume
significant "flat" amounts of fuel.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Also, fuel consumption is exponential with distance, for reasons similar to
the rocket requestion.

Wikipedia has a cool graph:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#/me...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#/media/File%3A777-224_fuel_burn-
range.png)

~~~
titzer
That graph is not 0-based, so it is very misleading.

~~~
simonh
Indeed. 7500nm generates only about 10% more CO2 than 2500nm. Not exactly what
I was expecting from 'exponential'.

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cheschire
I’m not sure I agree with the sliding scale penaliziation. If flights cost a
lot, they should just cost a lot. Penalizing people who use it more does
nothing to alleviate the gap between the haves and have nots at the individual
level, but really exacerbates the issue of medium sized companies breaking
into the international scene and further widens the gap that currently exists.

~~~
benj111
I assume it's meant to allow families to have their annual holiday?

On the one hand I agree with you, on the other its significantly harder to get
broad buy in when you're 'taking away peoples holidays'. So I would say this
is a good first step.

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bwindels
The co2 numbers don't seem to take radiative forcing [1] into account, so the
actual total climate impact would be 2-4 times the numbers mentioned in the
article.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviation#Total_climate_effects)

------
fxj
It would be very interesting to see the numbers of CO2 reduction if people
would have only one child instead of many. Overpopulation seems to be the
biggest problem at all.

~~~
vgoh1
There is a Catch-22 in choosing to breed less, in order to be responsible. You
are choosing to limit your genes, and in many respects limit your impact on
our culture. Irresponsibility continues to breed, while responsibility
doesn't. I absolutely agree that our CO2 emissions would be much lower with
fewer people, but choosing yourself to have fewer children is not the answer.
A lot of the world is choosing to have children at an older age, and this
almost always means less children. A better strategy is to try to get more
people from all cultures to share this trait (not forcefully, of course).

~~~
jkachmar
There’s an “easy” solution to this quandary, IMO: you can adopt.

You’re not directly contributing to the increase in carbon associated with
having a child because that child would exist regardless of your actions, and
you have the opportunity to pass on your cultural values and sense of
responsibility.

Best of both worlds, plus you’re providing a home and family to someone who
might otherwise not have one.

------
jacknews
I wonder how much carbon the average national newspaper puts out, with the
print newspaper itself and it's distribution, online edition servers,
journalist travel, accommodation etc.

Sure, we should fly less frivolously, but many other activities _can_ improve
their carbon footprint (flying, not so much, until we switch to butanol or
whatever), and many are also less necessary or beneficial than flying.

~~~
Symmetry
For most people the four biggest categories of carbon emission are the stuff
they buy, heating their house, car emissions, and jet flights. A newspaper
falls into the first category but it's a pretty small fraction of it.

------
antisthenes
Well, maybe if the US had a functioning health care system, I wouldn't have to
fly out of the country for any medical procedures.

Unfortunately, taking a train across the Atlantic is also a no-go.

Also, quite unfortunately, the US passenger rail system sucks in general, so
it's never going to be an alternative to flying, not in the next 30 years
anyway.

 _There are no alternatives for flying._

There are, however alternatives for local transport, which are hybrid/electric
buses, light rail, and generally not buying a giant F150 truck if you live in
the city and don't actually need one.

So maybe we can start there instead of bashing flying.

~~~
dgacmu
You seem to be taking this oddly personally. Here, bash my flying instead: I'm
about to take off from San Diego back to Pittsburgh after being here for 13
hours of a 25-person meeting. We collectively agree it produces better
outcomes than trying to discuss online, but perhaps we should decide it's not
worth the externalized costs.

~~~
antisthenes
I don't really want to bash anyone's flying, because as it turns out:

1\. There's no real alternative like I said 2\. It's actually pretty damn
efficient compared to personal vehicles 3\. There is very tangible value
produced by flying, compared to other forms of CO2 emissions (e.g. commuting
in large personal vehicles or recreational boating)

And yes, it's hard not to take health care issues personally. Until someone
figures out how to grow redundant organs from stem cells on the cheap.

------
rkachowski
Framing aircraft travel as a personal moral failure rather than a problem to
overcome wrt climate change leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The idea that
humans wishing to travel long distances in minimal times are somehow
exploitative doesn't sit well, along with the implication that you can do your
part by remaining in the section of earth you were born in.

Surely we should be focusing on solving the environmental and economic
problems of air travel rather than painting it as a decadent and reckless
means of moving around.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
_Surely we should be focusing on solving the environmental and economic
problems of air travel rather than painting it as a decadent and reckless
means of moving around._

I've yet to see any technology that is going to eliminate CO2 emissions from
air travel whereas we have all the technology we need to get to zero carbon
for pretty much everything else.

------
scruple
At what point do employers have a responsibility to stop flying their
employees all over their respective country/continent or the world for
$REASON_WE_CAN_JUSTIFY_IN_WORDS.

Why do I have to be made to feel guilty for being an economic migrant in my
own country and wanting to visit my family who I have had to move 3,000 miles
away from for employment? Why do these companies get a fucking pass every time
an article shows up?

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Symmetry
As bad as air travel is in absolute terms the way they cram people in it's not
too bad on a person-mile basis. About the same as a typical car being driven
with two people in it.

[https://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_128.shtml](https://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_128.shtml)

~~~
bwindels
True, cars are very bad for climate change as well. I think that the reason
people focus on airplanes is that they tend to take you a lot further. Almost
nobody flies for a 100km trip, like very few people undertake a 10.000km car
trip.

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schappim
The math seems to be off in this article (by 3x). It claims 3,153 Kg CO2 from
London to Perth.

A Boeing A380 creates 75g per passenger per Km[1]. The distance between London
and Perth is 14,470 Km = 1,085 Kg.

    
    
      [1] https://www.environmentalleader.com/2007/11/airbus-a380-could-have-jumbo-sized-carbon-footprint/

~~~
oli-hall
There are a few other aspects to consider, like radiative forcing[1], which
add a significant multiplier onto the basic CO2 released from burning the
fuel. For one take on calculation of emissions, see how MyClimate (a carbon
offsetting service) calculate total CO2 emissions[2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviation#Total_climate_effects)
[2]
[https://www.myclimate.org/fileadmin/user_upload/myclimate_-_...](https://www.myclimate.org/fileadmin/user_upload/myclimate_-
_home/01_Information/01_About_myclimate/09_Calculation_principles/Documents/myclimate-
flight-calculator-documentation_EN.pdf)

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dwighttk
I wonder why their calculator left out a lot of airports. (e.g. RDU doesn’t
work)

~~~
helb
> Emissions data for flight connections was sourced from atmosfair.de

They probably just copied part of data over. The calculator on Atmosfair's
site seems to be more detailed – more airports (RDU works, and you can even
input multi flight trips), selectable plane model & class.

[https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight](https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight)

------
hackeraccount
What if what we're getting for air travel justifies the green house gas
emissions?

~~~
dgacmu
A good argument for a carbon tax.

