Confessions of a Polar Bear Killer
My travel guilt, and how I deal with it.
On one level, it was heartwarming, er, make that heartchanging to see delegates from 189 countries tarrying away at last week's UN Climate Change Conference in Montreal, despite the ongoing hostility of the Bush regime to the Kyoto plan. But as a travel writer, I couldn't help feeling a pang of guilt by association when I thought of all those hundreds of right-minded scientists, activists and negotiators jetting home at the end of the week.
Picture the climate campaigner on her way back to Vancouver. She's gazing out the window at the withering troposphere, full of legitimate worry and purpose. She is also, almost certainly, feeling a nagging sense of hypocrisy, because she knows what I have recently learned: that we spew as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on a cross-country flight as we would if we drove a Hummer to work for the entire year.
This is the dirty secret of the airline industry. Air travel is one of the most efficient means of frying the climate. Like car engines, jets emit carbon dioxide. But that's only the beginning of the problem. The harmful nitrogen oxides they release have a much more powerful effect at high altitudes than they would on the ground. And those lovely vapour trails that jets leave behind in the sky? They fluff into heat-trapping, ozone-bashing cirrus clouds.
Travelin' man
Last January, a climate scientist freaked out a crowd at the European Parliament with a PowerPoint show featuring a view of the British Isles from space. The image, which you can check out among the photos here, looks like it has been scratched apart by a feral cat, so plentiful are the contrail lines crisscrossing it.
Today's commercial passenger planes are no more fuel efficient than their equivalents of fifty years ago. A study for the European Commission found that aircraft travel currently causes from 3.5 to 7.4 percent of global warming emissions. Those figures are expected to double within 50 years. No wonder the EU is considering a new tax on jet emissions.
Anyway, like I said, I'm a travel writer. I've made my living convincing people to squeeze their bums into economy seats on sun-bound airliners. I have told people that travel is good for them-good for the world, too, as long as we spend our money with the locals, rather than at Club Med. And for spreading this good news, I've been treated to all kinds of what you might call benefits: free flights, hotel rooms, surfing lessons, all-you-can-eat brunches and hundreds of umbrella drinks. The sun, the sand, the little adventures in places with impressive names like Malakula or Ixtaccihuatl. It has been a good life.
But a guy can't digest the bad news about air travel and continue to feel noble about this business. It's one thing for me to jet about. It's quite another for me to lobby thousands of people to follow my bad example. The carbon loads grow exponentially. So does the guilt. So a few months back, I decided to give the junkets a rest and spread the no-fly message.
Stop flying, you selfish people. Your Canada does not include Cancun. Stay home!
Not working for you? Well, some soft environmentalists have proposed another way around travel guilt. You can do what negotiators for wealthy nations have been doing all through the Kyoto talks: Buy your way out of guilt.
The cost of carbon
As Richard Kinley, acting Head of the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat put it in Montreal: "Carbon now has a market value." Although the central players are loathe to admit it, Kyoto's international emission trading system enables nations to buy and sell the right to pollute. Under the agreement's clean development mechanism, Canada can keep right on polluting with a clean conscience if we simply invest in green initiatives in other countries. The math may be tricky, but the effect is soothing.
The same sort of arithmetic is now being applied to individual polluters. Dozens of web sites now offer carbon offset programs (the David Suzuki Foundation offers a list) which allows you to calculate just how much CO2 your jet-setting will spew.
Some sites will also sell you a package of credits to make up for all that pollution. The idea here is that you "negate" the impact of your emissions by absorbing carbon from the air, or by avoiding the release of greenhouse gas elsewhere. Maybe you'll be buying solar kitchens for poor Senegalese, or treeplanting schemes in the Amazon. Either way, carbon offsets can be quite effective at replacing travel guilt with the warm fuzzies.
These offsets are becoming de rigueur among the jet set. The Rolling Stones declared their 2003 tour 'carbon neutral' after they cut a deal with the UK-based Carbon Neutral Company (then called Future Forests). The Stones apparently bought enough forest to suck up all the emissions associated with nine tour dates in the UK and North America-including the 13 kilograms of CO2 each fan would blow en route to the concerts.
The gold standard
So let's reconsider that winter vacation to Cancun. According to the Carbon Neutral Company's calculator, your portion of the 5564-mile round trip from Vancouver to Cancun will produce 2206 pounds of CO2. But for only $11.21, the company will plant a tree on your behalf, and declare your flights just as carbon neutral as the Stones' tour.
Travel companies are jumping on the bandwagon. Natural Habitat Adventures, which offers polar bear viewing tours, recently admitted that flying folks up to the arctic would contribute to the melting of the ice cap that polar bears like so much. In response, the company allows clients to calculate their trip's greenhouse gas costs and buy a special ticket to fund projects that will "negate" those costs.
This seems, at first, to be a terrific deal. But I checked with folks in the climate-saving business, and it turns out that many are having second thoughts about carbon offsets. Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace refuse to sell them. The David Suzuki Foundation offers a list of offset programs, but doesn't endorse any of them.
What's the problem with offsets?
First of all, not all of them are necessarily effective. Investing in new forests, for example, may suck up some of that carbon in the short term, but who's to say that forest won't be burned or cut down in the future?
Paul Lingl, a climate campaigner with the Suzuki Foundation, says that because of these concerns, scientists and NGOs have come up with a rating system for assessing offset programs. Only projects that focus on renewable energy and energy-efficiency currently get the Gold Standard nod.
Plane logic
Sounds good. The green energy sector sure could use the help competing with Canada's heavily-subsidized oil and gas industry, which gets $1.4 billion in tax subsidies each year.
But Lingl stops short of encouraging us to hop that flight to Cancun armed with green energy-funding carbon offset tickets. The guilt-o-meter is still humming. He says there remains an inherent problem with these voluntary offset programs. They let industry-and travelers-off the hook. They encourage us to keep polluting in the dirtiest ways.
There's no way around it, Lingl says: The worst thing we do to the environment is use cars and planes for travel. So the best bet for saving the climate is to vacation close to home.
But even a climate warrior like Lingl admits that there is some redemption to be had by cutting a middle path: You can feel good by taking fewer -- but longer -- holiday trips. And you'll feel positively righteous by limiting the distance of your trips. The Baja Peninsula is a few tones of CO2 closer than Cancun, for example. Consider taking a bus or train, the most climate-friendly ways to travel short of walking or biking. (Amtrak can get you from Vancouver to San Diego in a leisurely day and a half.)
After a few hours toying with the emissions calculator at safeclimate.net, I had this epiphany: By squeezing four friends into a mid-sized car, I could cut our long-distance air travel emissions by more than half, per person. And if I rented a hybrid car (Discount has a few in its fleet), the guilt would be slashed in half again.
I can see it now: The road trip, reborn and redeemed with back seats full and a glove box full of carbon offset receipts. Baja, here we come. Now if I can just convince a travel magazine to run a story about five guys rocking down the highway in a Prius…
Charles Montgomery is the author of The Last Heathen, winner of the Charles Taylor prize for literary non-fiction and the Hubert Evans prize for non-fiction. The research for the book required dozens of flights across thousands of miles, and did untold damage to the atmosphere. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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Fiat lux
6 years ago
Comments on "Confessions of a Polar Bear Killer"
I haven't been on an airliner since 1969, and never want to see either the in, or the outside of another one again. 90% of them should be scrapped tomorrow.
Now we come to military flights. Here, in Central BC, we have USAF, 8 engine, most likely H Bomb laden, B 52s over our heads several times a day, pulling their condensation mess , sometimes criss crossing , within minutes, North-South, East-West, using some facility in the Williams Lake area as a navigational correction point.
We could see the idiotic "fail safe" flights, going North and South during the Soviet times.
But with the demise of the USSR the flights have not stopped, or diminished, but increased in numbers, especially in the past year. While we used to have one or two flights a day, now we have six, or eight, day and night, wasting fuel, polluting the skies and our bodies.
I calculated once that during the time I could see one of those 45 year old murder machines, they are using enough fuel to run my tractors and truck for 5 years.
Of course, our neocon brains would say, that we need those flights "to protect our freedoms", because Canada is undermilitarized. But, as the survivor of many carpetbombing raids against the cities of Europe during WW2, I have yet to see a bomber "protecting" anything. They're attack, not defence weapons. So, who are they planning to bomb now in this era of Pax Americana and why in hell are they practicing it over BC?
Ed Deak, Big Lake.
MJK
6 years ago
You got it right halfway through your fine article: "Stay home". The big problem is the developed world has all these people with excess cash who have to spend it on something - air travel, Christmas, iPods, etc. So just staying home won't solve the problem. Maybe staying home and sending our excess cash to developing countries might help for awhile, but then they would have the excess cash and start doing just what we've been doing. So let's face it. We are all, ultimately, consuming little piggies some of whom develop guilt trips about our excessive ways. Voluntary poverty, anyone?
poindexter
6 years ago
What a ridiculous article. What next? You lefties should probably try to cut down on breathing and farting to reduce CO2 emissions.
Just because you lefties don't have any desire to succeed and enjoy life, don't try to guilt the rest of us hard workers into giving all our successes up to your socialist ideals.
I'll be enjoying my 9 hr trans-atlantic flights knowing you lefties are lighting your hair on fire about the emissions and how many 12 year old children in Burma were killed building my i-pod. Get a life whiners.
Fiat lux
6 years ago
Good thing you don't have any children, or grandchildren to worry about.
By the way, what is a lefty? I've lived under every known political ideology but am still looking for somebody to explain the difference between one gang of predators against another.
Ed Deak,
writerdave
6 years ago
I get my hackles up when I read an article that uses the term 'global warming' in a fait accompli fashion. At one time, not so long ago, the term was used in a 'could be-might be' scenario. Now, it suddenly 'is'.
Science, it seems, has stopped being about the pursuit of truth and has become all about the pursuit of perceptions.
Few, if any, reasonable people would suggest that dumping tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is a good thing. Then again, there is no unequivacable proof that the addition of said carbon dioxide is raising global temperatures by any substantial amount, nor is there any undeniable proof that such a now-taken-for-fact claim will lead to catastrophic consequences. There is no definitive proof that global warming, as it has become known, even exists in its well-touted state.
There is no proof that 2005's record hurricane season is because of 'global warming' or anything that human kind has 'done'. The records only go back so far and there is no one on the planet that can assure us all that 2005's season was not matched or bested in 1367, 1204 or 891 AD.
'Global warming', as it is touted, causes anxiety, concern and alarm. What I find more alarming is the dualism that exists when scientists publish or say differing views.
If a scientist were to stand up today and say he has evidence that the northern pole ice cap is melting, environmentalists and those supporting the global warming theory will all jump up and down in unison and say, "We told you so!" If a scientist were to stand up today and say he has evidence that glaciers in Greenland are growing, those same people will dismiss the information, brand the scientist as a modern day witch or say, "Obviously that scientist is in the pocket of the Neocon industrialist machine."
Would Greenpeace or the Sierra Club gladly fund a scientist(s) if the initial hypotheses was that sea levels have fluctuated for millions of years and there is no correlation between 'global warming' and sea levels? I think not.
We have stopped trying to make hard science out of global warming. We've simply accepted that it exists and now run around pointing at nearly everything we do as a cause for it. That isn't science.
pekes
6 years ago
I thought this was a good article, written by someone who finally understands some of the consequenses of consumerism and energy use - even made some legitimate suggestions.
As for his comment of "right-mined scientists, activists and negotiators", I'm reminded of the words Rex Murphy used to describe the Montreal conference:
It's been a strange week. I've been wondering
why the global warming conference in Montreal is
getting relatively little attention. Probably
because of the cold weather. It's odd for
another reason. Ten thousand people have come to
Montreal, ten thousand. For a conference on
reducing energy consumption. Now, ten thousand
is a large number, elephantine, in fact. I don't
suppose many delegates walked. As conferences
go, this one is a real Leviathan. Just think of the
Montreal summit's ecological footprint. Is there
really a need to fly ten thousand people from 189
countries to a cold city to exchange ideas? Is
there no e-mail? Are the phone lines down? Does
no one own a Blackberry? Well, I suppose in this
matter, ecology is not really different from
politics. High on sermons, low on example.
Maybe it's low-key because the celebrity
attendance is sparse. There are not many rock
stars there. What's an environmental summit
without rock stars? Are they all worn out after
making poverty history? That was their summer
project, remember.
But still, where's Bono? Is he still crushed, or in
some sulk from his disappointment with Paul
Martin? I'm not sure anymore that Canada is
allowed to take on international commitments
unless it's alright with Bono. Canada used to be
an independent country. Now we're just part of
an entourage.
There was a Canadian Press report from Montreal
whose lead sentence could have come straight out
of Alice in Wonderland. It read "Tens of
thousands of people ignored frigid temperatures
Saturday to lead a world-wide day of protest
against global warming." Wearing earmuffs while
chanting, "It's getting hot in here" might be
homage to Nellie, but it's not effective
salesmanship.
At the same demonstration on that brutally cold
day, one of the Greenpeace high priests offered
a brilliant synopsis of how comprehensively the
concept of global warming applies. He said, and I
quote, "Global warming can mean colder; it can
mean dryer; it can mean wetter." Well, if warm
can mean cold, if warm can mean wet, and if
warm can mean dry, is it fair to ask if warm still
means warm?
This is the beauty of global warming. It's a
theory that covers every possibility. More of a
tent than a thesis. The bigger disconnect at this
monster seminar goes further than rhetoric,
however. It's that Canada's the host of this
sequel to Kyoto, and that Canada's performance
since Kyoto – and remember, we signed on – is at
this date, 24 per cent higher than our 1990 levels.
According to our commitment, we're aiming for
six per cent lower. So as of 2005, there's a 30
per cent spread from what we've promised and
what we've done so far. The U.S., which didn't
sign on, is only thirteen per cent higher than its
1990 levels. Still, around the world, the U.S. is
the villain for not signing on, while countries like
ours, who talk a virtuous environmental line and
host King-Kong-scale conferences to celebrate
our commitment, pose as the planet's dearest
lovers. Perhaps Kyoto is Japanese for hypocrisy.
For The National, I'm Rex Murphy.
Percy
6 years ago
It's worth asking whether we'll need to go to Cancun to enjoy the sun after global warming, and all of our problems will be instantly solved. If we can enjoy summer temperatures in Canada without the need to flee our current winter hell, who's going to need jet travel? Here's my commitment: when the temperature in Canada goes up 5 degrees, I'll permanently stay home. Hmmmm, let's say I'll forego 15 southern vacations that way, so I've already banked enough credit to enjoy myself now in whatever way I want.
tommymoore
6 years ago
While I find myself far more concerned by Ed Deakes' observations of incessant B-52 flights as regards the fate of the planet, I do not need scientifically verified evidence to establish that burning 100,000,000 barrels of oild DAILY (and increasing, btw) is a harmless human pastime, with no repercussions. Carbon dioxide increase is a reality - measurable and quantified. While there may be debate on the source, and the ultimate effects, I am of the precautionary persuasion, and do not like the idea of experimenting with our planet. Human activity also adds a lot of heat; all energy used becomes heat - another unequivocal thermodynamic truism. Rex Murphy, George Bush, and many more naysayers doth protest, and strenuously so; reducing economic activity and conserving is patently anti-American, and flies in the face of the moronic model of growth and profit as god. Our right to jet off to warmer climes, whether to rain destruction on brown-skinned folk, or to tan our corn-fed, pasty hides, is inalienably fixed in our gobbling, wastrel, spendthrift, headlong-over-a-cliff, idiotic lifestyles.
Concerned Citizen
6 years ago
For a discussion on scientic fact vs belief, scientific proof vs uncertainty, see "Environmentalism as Religion" and "Aliens Cause Global Warming"
at http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/index.html. It's difficult to know who/what to believe these days, but then that's part of our problem. Environmentalism is based as much on faith & belief as on fact and science.
RickW
6 years ago
fiat lux:
I believe it is a baseball reference.........
That aside, there is really very little to worry about. Soon we wil have used up just about all the "free" energy we have tapped for the last 100 years, and with no practical alternative, we will die away, until there but a "reasonable" number of us left, wondering what all those strange contraptions are laying about.
http://iwarrior.uwaterloo.ca/?module=displaystory&story_id=1543&format=html&edition_id=32
RickW
6 years ago
Just because you lefties don't have any desire to succeed and enjoy life, don't try to guilt the rest of us hard workers into giving all our successes up to your socialist ideals.
I'll be enjoying my 9 hr trans-atlantic flights knowing you lefties are lighting your hair on fire about the emissions and how many 12 year old children in Burma were killed building my i-pod. Get a life whiners.
Obviously the poin - ted stick, poking at the wasp's nest.............
allan
6 years ago
We are all, ultimately, consuming little piggies, some of whom develop guilt trips about our excessive ways
I sort of agree with you on that concept. But then ol' [B]Poindexter comes along and proves to be a very poor example, wouldn't you agree?
He is one 'little piggie' who'll consume and burn and soil until legally forced to stop.
Yes, his self righteous display of entitlement to piss all over others, makes a terrible example.
I'll bet this sucker rides in nothing less than a Hummer.
I think it's a good thing people like Poindexter give the rest of us a holiday from them at least once a year.
Talk about a whine!
dononmain
6 years ago
My favorite part of this story is the ads for cheap airline tickets running down the sidebar. Tee Hee Tyee
Rob_
6 years ago
If anyone wants to buy Carbon Offset Certificates that support local projects you can do that through the Vancouver Renewable Energy Co-op:
vanrenewable.org
Rob_
6 years ago
That is because the scientific evidence is now overwhelming. If you read the peer-reviewed science journals it is quite clear that the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis has consensus.
There is no definitive proof that global warming, as it has become known, even exists in its well-touted state.
So you somehow know more about climate science than the hundreds of scientists that have devoted their life to the study of climate and have come to believe this?
There is no proof that 2005's record hurricane season is because of 'global warming'
But no scientist is making this claim ( see: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=181#more-181 )
We have stopped trying to make hard science out of global warming.
It is quite clear you have. Try reading some peer-reviewed science journals that deal with climate science. You will quickly see that things are quite different than you image.
Rob_
6 years ago
If people think the ramblings of a FICTION writer are a “discussion on scientic[sic] fact†then we are in deep trouble.
If you want to really understand the science then read peer-reviewed science journals. Stay away from friction writers.
You will find that the science is pretty clear – anthropomorphic climate change is happening.
Rob_
6 years ago
And if people can't use a dictionary we are in trouble too. :-)
I meant to use "antropogenic" not "anthropomorphic"
Concerned Citizen
6 years ago
Rob,
I'm not suggesting that a fiction writer has any better understanding of global warming than anyone else. However, Michael Crichton correctly points out that science is not based on concensus opinion, but on proof. Belief is not proof. Majority opinion is not proof. Political opinion is not good science. There are many examples throughout the history of science where the "concensus scientific opinion" of the day turned out to be false. So a lay person like myself (btw -- I have a masters in science) is left to wonder about Global Warming -- is there any real proof, or is it mostly conjecture and opinion. I've watched for decades the doomsay warnings of scientists like David Suzuki. I don't totally dismiss them, but there's a certain skepticism that builds up over time...
Bobb999
6 years ago
How come the climate change "sceptics" cannot seem to produce a single credentialed climate scientist to back up their denials?
As far as I can tell their main poster boy has been the European author of "The Sceptical Environmentalist" which came out a few years back. This cited "expert" had no training or credentials whatsoever in climate science.
Climate studies since that book have only added further confirmation of the greenhouse gas argument.
Oh yes,it's all happenstance: the glaciers melting at ever rapid rates, the disappearance of ice flows (and with them the polar bears who hunt seals on ice flows), average yearly temperatures regularly breaking records, southerly insects and birds never before seen
in the arctic are now appearing there...
No, no there's no tangible evidence at all.
It's just conjecture by a conspiracy of phoney scientists whose plan is to destroy the fine, upstanding oil industry with their dastardly lies! I can hear their evil laughter now...
willy
6 years ago
Bobb999 you want proof from a sceptic check out this site. Now read the whole site before you comment http://www.friendsofscience.org
Rob_
6 years ago
willy,
If you have been following the science of climate change you would know the all of the points raised in the website you posted have been addressed by serious scientists and have been found to be flawed.
Just pick one and I will be happy to point out its flaws.
Notice that NONE of the "scientific references (technical articles)" on the website have been published in peer reviewed science journals (most were published by political ideologues, like the fraser institute). Why is this? Because they don't stand up to scientific scrutiny.
Don't believe everything you read on the web. Just because someone says they are a “friend of science,†it doesn't mean that they are.
willy
6 years ago
Rob didn't read it did ya. The website debunked the so called peer reviews. Just because its peer reviewed does not make it correct. Who are the peers? Check out the credentials of the people on the website. I am all for pollution control its just the so called Kyoto accord is taking away money that could be better spent elsewhere. Its the same as the two billion taken away from crime prevention which was wasted on so called gun control.
otesaga
6 years ago
For an ecologically-correct use for an old airplane, check out the video interview at:
www. divemaster.ca/boeing
Rob_
6 years ago
Yes, I did. Again for those of us that have been following the scientific debate for a long time there is nothing new here. The points made in these articles have been dealt with long ago.
I could got through them all in detail but it would take too long. Just pick anyone of the arguments on the website and I will point out its flaws.
How?
Well, for a journal of climatology the peers would have to be climatologists. The standards for peer review vary from journal to journal but they are quite strict – much different from the publications like the “Fraser Forum†quote on your website. And the IPCC report was one of the largest peer reviewed projects in history. The majority of the climatologists in the world have been involved in it.
I did. There are TWO climatologists. If you have been following the climate debate you would know that the same 2 or 3 names always come up when “skeptics†are quoted. This compares to the hundreds that support the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis.
There is one meteorologist (close, but not a climate expert). One astronomer (her work in Astrophysics is widely respected but her work on climate has been throughly discredited in the scientific community).
The few others are geologists or some other discipline but not climatology.
Willy, again I have issued you a challenge.
Choose any specific argument from the website and let me point out the flaws in it.