Why No-Flying?

Before I do today's post, about my frivolous goings-on in Montreal, I wanna take a bit more time to explain why I've decided to go no-flying for this particular trip.

Firstly, this is not a vow that I will never fly again. I very well may. Heck, under extenuating circumstances, I may fly during this trip, but that's not in the plan, of course.

I think there are a number of reasons to want to abstain from the flight industry. Not least of which is the greenhouse emissions they are responsible for. I'm not gonna cite research here, so my numbers may be slightly off (maybe I'll come back with research in a later post), but all-in-all consumer flight is responsible for about 3-5% of human-made emissions. While this is a smaller chunk than many other things - including motor vehicles - the fact is, it's a preventable amount; just as one likely spends more on food than on alcohol in a month; this doesn't suggest that the best way to save money is to stop eating - obviously, the better choice is to reduce the amount that is preventable. True, motor vehicle travel is also preventable, to a very large extent, so perhaps that argument doesn't perfectly hold. However, flying is basically the biggest and quickest way to increase your carbon emissions for the year.

Rough-calculation example: Suppose you want to congratulate yourself for cycling, not driving, the 6 km to and from work for a whole year, so you fly to Florida for a vacation and fly back. In this mere few hours in the air, your personal emissions (as divided equally among all passengers on a full flight) are greater than what you saved in the whole year.

Now, I'm not condemning flight - like I said, I may do it again. I just find it interesting that many of the travelers I have met are the type of people who are concerned about environmental issues, but still choose to fly. This is why I feel like an important question on this trip is this: Is world travel a right, or is it something that we should just accept is not easily part of a sustainable lifestyle?

Anyway, that's my thoughts on that.

I aslo wanna quickly acknowledge that I'm aware that shipping makes up about the same percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions as flight. This is on an absolute comparison. There are, however, a number of factors that make travel by one different from travel by the other. I won't go deep into it now, but consider the following two things: Supply-and-demand, and efficiency - specifically fuel efficiency.

Okay, on to the Montreal post...