Stay Grounded - fly less and travel by other means or discover your local area - Wiki Thing

Why stay grounded?

Air travel has exploded in recent years, increasing by five times in the last thirty years, and in the UK CO2 emissions due to aviation doubled between 1990 and 2000. Aviation is the fastest growing contributor to climate change and CO2 emissions are expected to double again by 2030. But it's not just CO2 - planes also produce a cocktail of other greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide and water vapour which have a far greater warming potential, and their effects are made so much worse because they are released high up straight into the atmosphere. Commercial air travel burns over 200 billion litres of jet fuel every year and rising, and is responsible for over 700 million tons of CO2 emissions. To put this into perspective, a typical one-way flight from Europe to the US produces around 2 tonnes of CO2 per person, the same amount that a single person generates in an entire year due to heating and electricity.

And as well as CO2 emissions, travelling by plane can be uncomfortable and dull with several hours spent waiting at airports and security. Going by other means might take a bit longer, but it is ultimately a much richer and more memorable experience as it brings you in touch with a variety of sights, sounds and people that you would never would have experienced being stuck in a plane.

Carbon saved by choosing to stay grounded:

To calculate the carbon emissions of short, medium and long haul flights, we have chosen some popular holiday destinations, and weighted the emissions according to the average frequency of visits.

According to figures from the Civil Aviation Authority, ¹ the percentage of UK residents travelling to various parts of the world are as follows:

19% are domestic
58% to Europe
9% to North America (includes Canada)
14% to other countries

Shown below are the top popular destinations for UK residents, ordered by location (i.e. whether domestic, Europe, North America or other, as per above split, and the carbon emitted during a return trip (from London to each of the country's capitals except for the USA where New York is a more popular holiday destination). ² According to an analysis of online calculators, one of the best calculators for air travel is http://chooseclimate.org/flying. ³

UK (domestic)

Manchester - 425 kg
Edinburgh - 565 kg

Average emissions - 495 kg

Europe (Short haul)

Spain - 1143 kg
France - 525 kg
Italy - 1226 kg
Portugal - 1322 kg
Greece - 1874 kg

Average emissions - 1218 kg

North America (Medium haul)

USA - 3857 kg
Canada - 3753 kg

Average emissions - 3805 kg

Other Countries (Long & Medium haul)

Australia - 11159 kg
New Zealand - 12354 kg
Singapore - 7228 kg
South Africa - 6018 kg
China - 5435 kg

Average emissions - 8439 kg

Weighting these against the CAA statistics above:

19% domestic: 0.19 x 495 = 94.05
+ 58% Europe: 0.58 x 1218 = 706.44
+ 9% North America: 0.09 x 3805 = 342.45
+ 14% Other countries: 0.14 x 8439 = 1181.46

= average emissions of a return flight = 2324.4 kg CO2

Taking into account replacement journeys (someone might take a rail trip or a coach or car journey instead of flying), according to The Man In Seat Sixty-One, (http://www.seat61.com/) an excellent resource for alternatives to flying, rail journeys are typically responsible for at least a tenth of the CO2 emissions of the same plane journey, for example a trip by train from the UK to Tangier (Morocco) emits just 63kg. ⁴ So it is reasonable to assume that bringing the above emissions figure down to 2200 kg CO2 will cover someone using other modes of transport instead of flying.

Therefore the average CO2 emissions saved by not flying = 2200 kg CO2 per return trip.

Useful Resources

There are many websites and resources that can show you how to take spectacular holidays without needing to get on a plane:

The Man in Seat Sixty-One - the ultimate in getting you to your destination, even far-flung destinations, without flying
http://www.seat61.com/

Eco Escape - a guide to green places in the UK and Ireland to visit and stay
http://www.greentraveller.co.uk/

Loco2travel - low carbon travel adventures
http://www.loco2travel.com

European Rail Trips - these sites all have good information about travelling through Europe by train:

Erail - http://www.erail.co.uk/
European Rail Timetables - http://www.europeanrail.com/timetables.html
InterRail - http://www.interrailnet.com

Global train travel - http://www.traintraveling.com/

Public transport in the UK - these informative sites can all help you plan your journey by public transport:

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/travelandtransport/publictransport/index.htm
http://www.traveline.org.uk/index.htm
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/

Top 100 Flight free holidays - Guardian feature
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/top100flightfreeholidays

Footnotes

Footnotes

Reference Notes

1 Figures from CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) page 6, Aviation Trends report 2010 http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/80/ERG_AviationTrends_Q1_2010.pdf

2 http://www.holidayhypermarket.co.uk/USA

3 http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/CommentAnalysis/Features/CarbonCalculators.aspx. Chooseclimate.org calculates emissions based on user selection of a location's latitude and longitude; the location of the cities were taken from the longitude and latitude of the main city airport as given by http://www.world-airport-codes.com

4 http://www.seat61.com/CO2flights.htm