Saturday, June 14, 2008

Carbon Footprint Reflection

I was reading Steve Hawkins' musings on his travelling Blog "The Grumpy Traveller- Complaining my way around the World." Steve is on his way to North America, ultimately for his brother's wedding. He will stop over here in Toronto. He mentioned his travels here will include 19 flights on this trip alone, each with a significant impact on the world's carbon emissions. Hmm.
I started to add up the flights we packed into one year:

1- Toronto- Chicago
2- Chicago- Honolulu
3- Honolulu- Kona
4- Kona- Honolulu
5- Honolulu- Sydney
6- Melbourne- Brisbane
7- Brisbane- Cairns
8- Cairns- Sydney
9- Sydney- Melbourne
10- Darwin- Brisbane
11- Brisbane- Melbourne
12- Melbourne- Sydney
13- Sydney- Melbourne
14- Melbourne- Christchurch
15- Christchurch- Auckland
16- Auckland- LA
17- LA- Toronto

I am curious to research just how much of an impact our year away had, and to explore the paradox that visiting other countries and cultures in a low impact way has, when we use airplanes to get to them.

I trued out a few online Carbon calculators. We added at least 25,000 kg of Carbon Dioxide with our flights alone. Next up, some research on how to offset our impact...

No comments: