katehodal stories

I am extolling the virtues of my recent train journey to the Alps – the rollicking peace and quiet, the opportunity to catch up on work, the carbon neutrality of it all – when my cousin gruffly clears his throat and interrupts me.

"I flew 150,000 miles with Emirates last year, did I tell you?" he says. He is barely 25 and spends most of his time flying across the world looking for international acts to sign up to the Fringe festival, despite the fact that he is a full-time student.

"I've got a special credit card and first class tickets and everything now. They love me."

We are sitting in a café I chose because Gilbert and George are meant to be regulars. And Gilbert and George have just walked in. They are wearing matching grey suits and sit across from each other in near unison.

I want to tell him this – that Gilbert and George have just appeared and that they turn their noses up at carbon emissions and that he, John, should too – but Gilbert and George are visual anti-Christs, not environmentalists, so I say, instead, "Wow."

This is my family – and this is the way we learn. By mistake. Or, I suppose, by overindulgence and then realization. John reckoned he'd made 20 roundtrip flights last year, most of them to Cuba, India and Sri Lanka, with more trips to Dubai and Colombo planned in the upcoming months.

Flying is part of his work; travelling is part of his heart. Break up the two things and you would, I fear, have an Unhappy John.

But travelling and flying don't necessarily have to go hand in hand: I know this now. While Staying Grounded promised to turn me unhappy too, ripping away from me the notion of seeing and experiencing the world one country at a time, it was only my own ignorance and fear that kept me strapped into all those airline seats.

Hailing from a nation where train journeys are associated with death (we have Amtrak derailments to blame for that) and voyages over five hours are expected to involve planes, the fact that I can travel, see and feel and taste the world, and not actually have to die or spend three weeks doing it, is novel to me.

And wondrous.

So I decide, there and then, to help convert my family's Gypsy DNA from a dependency on planes to a love for slower travel. I'm obviously not yet 100% Carbon Neutral – not anywhere close, actually – but I am excited at the prospect of getting me, and my family, there.

Unfortunately, the setbacks on my own pathway to slower travel have been notable. Work said No to a ferry and train journey to Norway (I told you they would!) and, worst of all, the wedding party in India has decided to travel from Mumbai to Delhi by plane instead of taking the 16-hour train, thereby adding another 0.1 tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere.

This is Bad News to me, and not just because I sat, last week, in front of Mont Blanc during a climate change conference and saw, first hand, how much of its perfect snowy whiteness has been lost in the past year.

It is Bad News because I want to see India from sideways, not above. I want to smell the air as it rushes through the train windows, hear the sounds of the wheels on the tracks, experience the mayhem and chaos of the stations.

I say this to John. "You don't want to take the train in India, it takes forever," he snorts. "Just fly!"

But I want to cram myself in on the women's carriages, talk to people, feel Life!

John has stopped listening. He is away, thinking somewhere else, his eyebrows knitted together furiously.

"You'll get harassed," he finally says. "You should be careful. But the things you'll see on the train you won't see anywhere else, especially if you take the night trains around Mumbai – they're fantastic."

He knits his eyebrows together again. "I would go with you, if I could."

He's due to fly to Mumbai while I'm out there anyway, he says. And he could show me around, introduce me to his Bollywood friends, help me find a ghaghra for the sangeet I am dancing in.

"You'll love it - it's an experience you won't get anywhere else."

So – we scrap the plane and travel by train together instead?

"Is 150,000 miles really a lot?" he asks.

I nod.

"Isn't it just a load of bollocks though? That flying is really that bad?"

I shake my head. After what I learned at that climate change conference, after reminding myself that, actually, the world was connected by boats and trains and tuk-tuks and bicycle lanes and hiking paths, my plane journeys will be fewer and farther between.

I feel good about it all, feel good that my future – and that of the world's – is in my hands. That I can decide how I should see it.

And that it doesn't need to involve more temperature changes, or weird weather patterns, or additional airports, or plastics to make food trays or sick bags stuffed in with duty-free magazines.

I just need to figure out a regular income – one that allows me to be in many different places at once, whereby regular internet may not be so common – and I'll be sorted. I envision long talks with my editor and happy smiles all around. Really.

John looks vaguely relieved. "It'll be great to take the train together," he says.

"I love Emirates, but I've had it with having to fly all over the place."

He sighs, looks over at Gilbert and George, and looks me in the eye.

"It's exhausting."

One down, the whole rest of the family tree to go.

That's ok.

I like dares.

That question – graffittied onto the shutters of a closed-down shop in a refugee camp in the West Bank – seemed to read my mind when I saw it last summer.

I even remember having a very good answer for it, too: "Exploring the world!"

It was Day 2 of a whirlwind, four-day tour to Israel, where I had flown in to visit a friend who was teaching in that camp.

Looking back on it now, though, I'm not so sure such a response was ever justified.

Last year, I took 16 flights in seven months and caused 12 tonnes of CO2 to infiltrate our atmosphere. Apart from telling you as much in last week's posting, I did absolutely nothing about it but make the admission that some of those flights were for work, some were for pleasure, and some were entirely superfluous (which some readers weren't too pleased with).

Staying Grounded was a dare – and a particularly timely one, too. I realised, at the time, that I was flying a lot, and the honest answer to why I didn't stop myself from such mindless self-indulgence is that, quite simply, I was in a hurry.

I wanted to see the world. Now. No waiting around for cargo ships and all that jazz.

Flights always seemed a bit of a luxury for a gal leading a relatively low carbon lifestyle like me. But Staying Grounded wasn't intended to make me consume less or walk more or do any of the things I normally do; I had to ask myself instead if I could find methods of traveling apart from flying.

And the truth is, of course I can.

I still want to see the world – but I'm keen on seeing it in a slightly healthier way, if you will, for both myself and the planet. Slow traveler Ed Gillespie's voyages by bus, ferry, ship and rail last year were journeys I have fantasized over for years (www.lowcarbontravel.com) - but I figured I'd just have to wait until I was rich enough, famous enough or carefree enough to give myself the time and freedom to chuck it all in and just step out into the world without having a flight (or empty bank account) calling me back home.

But what kind of thinking is that? Not very good thinking. While it will be incredibly challenging for me to see my family – both economically and time-wise – without hopping on a plane out to California, I can and want to control the number of flights I take for work and for pleasure much better than I have in the past.

That's why, by the time you read this, I will have journeyed from London to Combloux, France – a 650-mile voyage – courtesy of carbon-neutral Eurostar and carbon-low TGV for a conference on climate change.

In the 11 hours it will take me to get from door to door, I will have produced one-third of the CO2 that the same two-hour journey by plane would have afforded me.

And I will have had time for a quick lunch in Paris.

I won't have saved the world, but I will have given my first travel experience of 2009 a fresh start.

But it's one step forward, two steps back. In just the next month I'm due to take two flights: one to India, for my best friend's wedding (clocking in at 2.12 tonnes of CO2, with a layover in Abu Dhabi); and another to Norway (0.5 tonnes of CO2), for work.

The wedding is a week-long affair, the kind that my editor isn't too pleased with losing me to. I can't take more time off of work to travel to India the slow way, however much I would like to – it's not even an option. And while I know that my carbon footprint will be low once there – I'll be voyaging by train, staying in hostels and not eating meat – that's not much of a consolation. I know I could choose not to go at all; but I don't want to miss this wedding for anything.

The flight to Norway, however, is a different story. I've requested that I be able to travel by ferry and train, a journey that would take me through Germany and up to Denmark and then up to Tromso, a three-day affair rather than a couple of hours' flight. I'm waiting to see what my editor says about that – and fear that in this age of recession, where time spent journeying isn't time spent behind the desk, I'll be met with a resounding No.

This isn't necessarily anyone's fault – it reflects, rather, the "Time Is Money" paradigm that rules our lives. I unfortunately do not have the option as of yet to say, 'Choose me or choose the flight'. I still need to earn a living.

But if I see any graffiti in Combloux this weekend that asks me what I'm doing so far from home this time round, I'll be able to answer a little bit more straightforwardly.

I'm discovering a better way to live.

I caused a meteorite to crash into the Earth.
Ok, not literally. But kind of.

Its name is Mbozi and it lives in Southern Tanzania. Made out of nickel and iron, it crashed to Earth over a thousand years ago, pummelled to its remaining bits by the Earth’s atmosphere after travelling for a million years or so. It was only discovered, officially and by a guy called W.H. Nott, in 1930. And, if you find yourself near the southwestern slope of Marengi Hill, off the road to Tunduma, you can go see it for 1,000 Tanzanian shillings, or 50p.

While there, have a go at me. Please.

That rock is my wanderlust. It personifies my emotional and physical attachments to flying, my personal and professional commitments and desires. It represents me – and, to some degree, my family’s gypsy DNA, as I explained last week. But its impact on the world is notable.

I flew enough times last year to create 12 tonnes of CO2. And you know what? That’s exactly the same weight as Mbozi, the world’s eighth-largest meteorite.

It’s mind-boggling that the sixteen flights I took in seven months last year weigh that much (or look like that), but without Mbozi, this ethereal notion of ‘CO2’ seeping into the atmosphere doesn’t mean much to me. Mbozi is what happens when I get in a plane, recline my seat its full 3cm, breathe in some fumes, strap on my seatbelt and sit back for the salty pretzels, diet Coke and in-flight entertainment.

I fly so much that I’m an expert at which airports require shoes off and laptops out. I’ve survived a near plane crash in Chile (the businessman next to me, who was reading (yes, actually reading) a porn magazine, didn’t even blink an eye), second-degree burns from an over-microwaved ham-and-cheese sandwich, and the torture of a child who played foot drums against my seat for the entirety of a 15-hour flight to Fiji.

But never did I actually ‘see’ the impact all my flying has done. And while Mbozi isn’t, actually, my flights’ CO2 curdled into one big rock, I only have myself to blame for the world’s weirder weather, rising sea levels, and all that bad post-pretzel indigestion.

Using Climate Care’s carbon calculator [www.climatecare.org], I looked at where I’d been, how many stopovers I made to get there, and how much carbon it all produced, all within the twelve months of 2007. (You’ll note that the spring was my ‘Quiet Period’, but don’t be fooled. I travelled enough past April to turn a pebble into a meteorite).



A lot of those flights were for work, but a lot of them were also for pleasure. And some of them mingled both work and pleasure – like my voyage out to the deliciously lunar landscape of Iceland, where I covered an indie and electro music festival called Icelandic Airwaves and ended up gracing NME's coverage on the wicked after-party in the Blue Lagoon (where you can see me, in my pink-and-blue shades, pictured above).

I definitely could have avoided some of those flights (Cancun and Tel Aviv were pretty superfluous, although I'm glad I went to both those places), and I surely should have avoided the layovers (like when my luggage was stolen in Mexico and I had to wait in Minneapolis in a miniskirt for three hours in minus 18C weather).

But surely there must be a way that we can zip through the air without killing everything underneath it? I’ll leave the organically-stocked, sustainably-fuelled planes (made out of recycled materials and soundless as birds) to the engineers and dream enthusiasts.

In the interim, I’m taking a look at my carbon offsetting options - investments in hydro-electric dams in China, putting money into portfolios to get Ethiopians better stoves or planting some trees. Mbozi – now black and burly – shall soon be green. Ok, not green. But a little bit greener.

That's a photo of me, aged 18 months, just before my first-ever plane journey. I look petrified, but I think I was actually ecstatic. I remember the smell of the diesel at the airport, the buzz and hustle-bustle, the noise, the lights, the urgency. We were going to visit my mother's family in England, back when planes had smoking compartments and the stewardesses were still vetted for their long legs and good looks. It was to be the first of many trans-Atlantic journeys, which the very thoughtful customs official at Heathrow might have foreseen. Stamping a bright red "Not Eligible For Employment" on the fresh pages of my passport and smiling a British 'Welcome to England' grin at me, he set in stone a real love and passion for traveling in me. Not to mention a fear of English teeth.

Conceived in New York, born in Los Angeles, once referred to as 'psychotically delusional' by a boyfriend and boasting the DNA components of generations of immigrants, I'll be the first to admit that I'm daunted by this 'Stay Grounded' notion. I am related to both the first woman off the Mayflower (trust me – she would have taken a plane instead of that boat if she could have done, knowing my family) and a first-generation immigré who came through Ellis Island, seeking a new life in the States. My father emigrated to London before making my mother immigrate to California, and my gran was a travel agent up until the age of 85. My family live as far apart as Spain, Scotland, England and either side of the USA, with most of us having lived for extended periods of time in Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East. Trying to keep myself in one place at one time seems not only a near impossibility, it just seems un-fun.

Travelling, to me, is one of the great joys of being alive. We voyage through a birth canal to arrive at one destination, and then find ourselves on one journey after another – from the growing pains of childhood to the acne and erection-laden days of adolescence; the whimsical nonchalance of young adulthood to the promises of marriage, children, mid-life crises, senility and illness. Then there's the least looked-forward to journey of all: death. Add to all that the ups and downs of having emotions, meeting people, visiting places and countries and ideas, and, the notion of staying still through it all seems like the worst way to spend one's days.

Don't get me wrong: I know there are means of travel that don't include airplanes, huge CO2 emissions and tins of lasagna with a side salad and a nasty-ass vacuum-wrapped brownie. But…there's the problem of my job. A journalist by trade, and an environmental one at that, I'm required to travel for work – whether it's to cover an environmental film festival in Brazil or write a story on an eco water park in Slovakia. I can't possibly write about the world's disappearing lakes, interview its environmental refugees or investigate the Amazon without hopping on a plane. I can choose to cover those stories less, or offset those journeys, but it's how I'm going to balance it all, and cut down on my personal airplane trips, that worries me. I already feel like I'm letting my family name down. Sure, I can visit my cousin in Madrid by train instead of plane, but how can I visit my 96-year-old grandfather in California (and watch Mexican telly with the sound turned on full volume) without Delta Airlines? Or gallop across the steppes of Mongolia like Genghis Khan, the wind ruffling my hair, without jetting to Ulan Bator, first?

Perhaps I can be the first traveller in my family of travellers to find a more sustainable means of seeing the world. Perhaps Staying Grounded isn't so scary. Perhaps it means a whole new world order for me. Perhaps.