To Fly or Not to Fly

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and didn't go back to sleep for a couple of hours.  That's unusual for me.  Normally, I'll wake up, roll over and I'm out again in a wink.  But last night I started thinking and worrying and turning things over in my mind.  The cause?  We had just booked a flight to Acapulco.

Oh dear, how could that possibly keep me up all night worrying?  It's this carbon business.  In a flash I've probably wiped out all of my lower thermostat, no plastic bags and eating meat free meals by one spur of the moment whimsey to spend a week sitting in warm weather by a swimming pool.  In the Chutes and Ladders game of reducing my carbon use, I've just slid down a very long chute.

Should I feel guilty?  My daughter says to get over it and in today's Worldwatch Institute's newsletter the author of an article on transforming culture to reduce consumption makes the point that putting too much import on the individual's responsibility to change behavior can inadvertently take away emphasis from the cultural, political and business changes that are necessary to have significant impact on global warming.

That's all well and good, but I know that a culture is composed of individuals and it is the actions and decisions of those individuals that dictates how that culture will be  - so I feel guilty anyway even though I plan on having a very good time during our winter break.  It's not that I think flying to someplace warm in the winter is a bad thing.  We live in Minnesota after all.  It seems the only sane thing to do after a week like the last one.   But I know that our decision was made quickly without a lot of thought and there are closer, easier to get to places that we could have chosen.

So what am I going to do to alleviate my guilt?  Maybe I'll buy some carbon offsets.  It isn't the same thing as not flying, but it will help.   I'll let you know about that.

Is it better to fly or drive?  Getting specific statistics is kind of like reading the Bible - the answer changes depending upon how it is interpreted, but generally speaking, flying has a  slightly larger carbon impact than driving alone and when you add people in the car, the benefit to driving expands significantly.  With 4 people in an efficient car you can even compete with the efficiency of a train.  That was a surprise to me.  The most efficient way to travel though, by far, is to take the bus!