Tips for flying to the Copenhagen climate conference 21

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1. 

   enviroperk Posted 6:03 am
   18 May 2009

   Another eco-friendly suggestion: Stay home and watch the video/recordings on the Internet.I am alone in be appalled by the incredible hypocrisy having people fly from around the world to attend an environmental conference?  Isn't this a bit like serving CF raised succulent pig at an animal rights dinner?There are many alternatives available that can achieve all the benefits ( well maybe not the partying in Copenhagen at the expense of the good donors to your "environmental organization" )  without the environmental costs.  I love the thought of "low carbon" air travel, "Okay, I will just have a half-serving of that pig."  

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   1. 

      Christopher S. Johnson Posted 8:50 am
      18 May 2009

      No.  That sounds petty.  Penny-wise and pound foolish puritanical nutty talk.  Sorry.  There is work to do.  The amount ultimate CO2 reductions that will come as a result of the conference outweighs the impact of flying there by about one-gazillion to one.Real long term effectiveness trumps ANY eco knee-jerk feeling we would be having right now.We do what we can reasonably do until the foundation changes and then it becomes automatic.  But changing the foundation is the priority.God, this sounds like a right-wing complaint about Gore flying to educate so many.  Sheesh.

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         enviroperk Posted 8:59 am
         18 May 2009

         Sorry. Your argument is cliche-riddled and fact free. The very same cliches that people use as excuse not to change.What if this became a virtual conference as a demonstration that many of the tens of thousands of fly-in conferences held every year were not necessary, dare anyone calculate the real and measurable impact that will have on this years CO2 emissions? That is change.Talking about change while maintaining the same behaviour feels good though, doesn't it? 

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2. 

   Christopher S. Johnson Posted 9:34 am
   18 May 2009

   Your sentiment is completely understood.  This is an academic classroom argument.  The conference is happening and the KEY players will want to see the whites of other's eyes and tremble of their hands as they negotiate the most important treaty in human history.  Our little tempest in a tea pot here will have zero effect upon that.Sometimes cliches reach a deep truth -- espeacilly about effectiveness."cut off your nose to spite your face""penny-wise, pound foolish""a stitch in time, saves nine"Equating 'cliche' and 'not true' is a young-person's mistake.  I can only advise that you "begin with the end in mind" and look at the long term goal, and what is the most effective way to get there.  This is a really, really tough deal, not a city council meeting.  Pressuring the U.S., India, and China in the hallways in Copenhagen is a must.By the way, I'll WILL be watching on the Net cuz I have no business being there.  ;-) 

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   1. 

      enviroperk Posted 7:26 pm
      18 May 2009

      Good for you in staying home!  Possibly "penny-wise and pound foolish" apply to our emissions of CO2, and tis' certainly true that "a stitch in time saves nine" argues for having stopped our carbon foolishness sooner rather than later.Though I may be making a youthful error again by assuming after 15 years of these conferences, any real negociation happens before and after the conferences, and the conference itself is mostly grandstanding.In my later years I may see the fallacy of my youth and hopefully i will be be forgiven.After all, I am only fifty-three.  

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3. 

   Markfromoz Posted 4:48 pm
   18 May 2009

   If you are going to go then why not try and fly with airlines that are pioneering jet bio fuel like Air New Zealand or Continental, write them or call them and tell them your flying with them for that reason!If you are going to "offset" your flights try and find out where the airlines Carbon Offset goes, it ain't easy to get an straight answer sometimes.Alternatively offset your own flight and purchase high quality "additional" credits/certificates that actually result in investment in new renewable energy projects!Then you can eat all the hog you want and feel good about it. 

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   1. 

      enviroperk Posted 9:31 pm
      18 May 2009

      What a relief, for a moment I thought I was going to have pull out all the complicated stuff about how the biofuel creation-through-consumption-chain actually produces more CO2 than fossil fuels, and that carbon offsets (credits) do not really mean that less CO2 goes up into the atmosphere.Then I read your "eat all the hog and feel good" and realized your must be metophorically hinting me the the popular fallacy-cliche of "having your cake and eating it too"!You were being sarcastic in a very clever way.(me thinks :)   

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      1. 

         Markfromoz Posted 10:38 pm
         18 May 2009

         …It was an attempt at the lowest form of humor…However at the risk of appearing like a defeated pessimist I should add that despite the limits and current inefficiencies of bio fuels and the general public misunderstanding of what carbon credits actually achieve they are steps forward from the business as usual scenario. Rather than being highlighted for the very real negatives (or being celebrated as silver bullets), they should be promoted for what they are - a step in the right direction so that other business, governments and NGO's can learn from the mistakes, pitfalls and potentials and accelerate us towards some kind of sustainable existence.…so you can have your bacon flavored lentil burgers and eat them instead.

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4. 

   sindark Posted 2:23 pm
   21 May 2009

   I have been a participant in a long and wide-ranging debate about the ethics of flying, given climate change.
   
   The basic conclusion is that doing so is morally unacceptable, unless there is an overwhelmingly important reason to do so:
   
   "Imagining a world stabilized at 500 ppm, with reasonably similar per-capita emissions for all states, it seems quite impossible that there can be air travel at anything like contemporary levels. It is possible that some miracle technology will allow high-speed flights to occur without significant greenhouse gas consequences, but no such technology is even within the realm of imagination today.
   As someone who has long aspired to travel the world, this is a very difficult conclusion to reach. It now seems possible that air travel bears some moral similarities to slavery. Before people become overly agitated about the comparison, allow me to explain. Just as slavery was once a critical component of some economies, air travel is essential to the present world economy. Of course, economic dependency does not equate to moral acceptability. If our use of air travel imperils future generations - and we are capable of anticipating that harm - then flying falls into the general moral category of intentional harm directed against the defenceless. After all, future generations are the very definition of helplessness, in comparison to us. We can worsen their prospects by fouling the air and turning the seas to acid, but they will never be able to retaliate in any way.
   While I personally fervently hope that some solution will be found that can make continued air travel compatible with the ethical treatment of the planet, nature, and future generations, I must also acknowledge the possibility that people in fifty or one hundred years will look upon us as sharing some moral similarities with plantation owners in the United States, prior to the civil war.More"
   
   As for ships, they might actually be worse. Consider some figures from this discussion:
   
   "From the Queen Elizabeth II website we find that at 28.5 knots it burns 380 tons of fuel per day which is 50 feet per gallon. If you divide that up among 1900 passengers, it works out to about 18 miles per gallon for each passenger.
   
   So:
   
   Cruise ship = 18 miles per gallon
   Auto = 25 miles per gallon
   747 = 80 miles per gallon"
   
   If you absolutely must be in Copenhagen, flying may be the best way to do it. The best advice for most people is to stay away, unless your being there will really make a difference in the outcome.

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   1. 

      sindark Posted 2:27 pm
      21 May 2009

      Incidentally, I still really hate the new Grist 'rich text' editor. Could you please give people an option to just write their comments in HTML?

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   2. 

      Christopher S. Johnson Posted 2:57 pm
      21 May 2009

      I wonder how Richard Branson's personal research into a new jet fuel is going.  100% of the profits form Virgin Air are supposed to go into it.

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   3. 

      Markfromoz Posted 3:47 pm
      21 May 2009

      The reality is people around the world are simply not going to stop flying. The amount of remorse you expressed is honorable but the grim reality is that guilt or no guilt, until we role our sleeves up and seriously work to make bio fuels profitable and sustainable we will move nowhere on this topic.While not directly related to the above, business and industry are not the enemy, they are the means by which we got here (good and bad) and they are the means by which we'll move forward. As such they should be engaged and directed, not demonised.

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      1. 

         sindark Posted 9:27 am
         22 May 2009

         "The reality is people around the world are simply not going to stop flying." Unless huge advances are made in biofuels, the point will come before too long when it is simply far too expensive for most people. That is, if we implement the kind of mitigation policies necessary for dealing with climate change. The last thing we can allow is coal-to-liquids fuels for air travel.

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5. 

   eriqa Posted 8:39 pm
   21 May 2009

   Understanding that the actual negotiators need to be there in person, there are going to be a lot of "climate tourists" who just want to be able to say they were there, when.  While the impulse to see years of your work validated in person is understandable, those folks really would do better to stay home.  It would be interesting to know what the Danes are doing in terms of videoconferencing arrangements (video side events, etc.) to both let the non-traveling world participate more than it usually does, and to give a publicity boost to this technology as an emerging way to cut carbon emissions.  

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   1. 

      Markfromoz Posted 9:07 pm
      21 May 2009

      That's a very good point. I've been wondering if this event is being televised too (beyond the sloppy 6pm efforts of main stream news...)I'd love to see some of the deals that go on in the background, especially for the Clean Development Mechanisms. So many entrepreneurs are going to be networking the hell out the joint!

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6. 

   oracle2world Posted 6:23 am
   24 May 2009

   People don't travel in order to attend meetings.  They attend meetings in order to travel.  They are called "travel junkies" and if they have to attend some meeting that doesn't amount to anything, so be it.  You have to travel to be important.If the same results could be achieved without travel, no one would be interested.Ever wonder why video-teleconferencing never caught on?  Where I work there are half a dozen very expensive video-teleconferencing units that mostly go unused.  Because the travel is the thing.  Not the logical business at hand.But there is a good side to all this.  Folks on travel tend to be out of the office and stressed out, that prevents them from doing any real damage. 

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   1. 

      Christopher S. Johnson Posted 7:33 am
      24 May 2009

      In some cases you might be right. But in this case there needs to be people cornering people in hallways, spontaneous meetings, and emergency pow-wows. This is NOT a meeting for the sake of travel.

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      1. 

         oracle2world Posted 11:51 am
         24 May 2009

         The whole point of "transparency" is to AVOID these backroom deals.  If the negotiations won't stand the light of day, then maybe they were not going to work from the get go.Unless China and India are on board, there is little point in negotiating a post-Kyoto Protocol global climate plan ... and no one pushes China around or has any influence with them.Nothing substantive came of Kyoto, and more empty promises that come to fruition (if ever) in the year 2050 are just more of the same.And in the era of internet collaboration tools, this is not a tough issue to discuss remotely.  There are countries in the world, they emit CO2.  To significantly reduce CO2 requires x cuts distributed over y countries.  No country is going to destroy its economy to cut CO2 ... hence we are back to where we were 20 years ago.

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7. 

   Christopher S. Johnson Posted 12:48 pm
   24 May 2009

   "Oracle",Relax. Watch.  Listen.  We're all going to learn new things this year.  This is 2009.  2009 is not 1994, nor 2050.  2009 is 2009.   Let it unfold in it's 2009-kind-of-way.

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8. 

   sindark Posted 8:56 am
   26 May 2009

   More on ships versus planes"For a time, I thought that the way to solve the long-distance-transport
   problem was to revert to the way it was done before planes: ocean liners.
   Then I looked at the numbers. The sad truth is that ocean liners use more
   energy per passenger-km than jumbo jets. The QE2 uses four times as
   much energy per passenger-km as a jumbo. OK, it’s a luxury vessel; can
   we do better with slower tourist-class liners? From 1952 to 1968, the eco-
   nomical way to cross the Atlantic was in two Dutch-built liners known as
   “The Economy Twins,” the Maasdam and the Rijnsdam. These travelled
   at 16.5 knots (30.5 km/h), so the crossing from Britain to New York took
   eight days. Their energy consumption, if they carried a full load of 893
   passengers, was 103 kWh per 100 p-km. At a typical 85% occupancy, the
   energy consumption was 121 kWh per 100 pkm – more than twice that of
   the jumbo jet. To be fair to the boats, they are not only providing trans-
   portation: they also provide the passengers and crew with hot air, hot
   water, light, and entertainment for several days; but the energy saved back
   home from being cooped up on the boat is dwarfed by the boat’s energy
   consumption, which, in the case of the QE2, is about 3000 kWh per day per
   passenger."

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9. 

   mimi Posted 7:59 pm
   27 May 2009

   mimi kindly wishes some people to get a life. there is no free lunch. life is about tradeoffs. to solve our biggest problems together, people need to touch. to see. to feel. and then to return to loved ones as soon as possible. and mimi is terrified of boats anyway. 

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