The media is promoting tips for a "Low Carbon Footprint Travel" for the upcoming summer vacation season. I saw it posted in NerdWallet and a couple other places. The facts & thinking look like they are pulled from an insipid White House press release.
They highlight that cars emit 3x as much carbon as trains per passenger mile (.47 vs .17). There is no reference to airplanes. They also don't tell you how many people they assumed are in the car - a solo driver, a couple, a family of 6? There is no detail or context.
To help, I calculated the carbon emissions to go from Minneapolis to St. Louis this summer. I'm making this trip with my son in June. It's about 600 miles each way, so it would generate about 564 pounds of carbon, based on their numbers. Using the TerraPass 'carbon offset ' price of $16/ton, the carbon offset cost of my trip is $4.81. Peanuts.
To make the same trip by train, as the author recommends, the carbon offset cost would be $1.63. A whopping savings of $2.88 in carbon offsets. I'm not sure if I could even by a cup of coffee on Amtrak for that much. Of course, the Amtrak train doesn't run from Minneapolis to St. Louis, so I'd have to travel an extra 500 miles to switch trains in Chicago. I don't think I could even get to St. Louis on the same day after going to Chicago, but I will have saved $1.53 in carbon costs to the planet. Very efficient.
Of course, the article also warns me to avoid cities that aren't "robust with public train networks". I guess that means St. Louis. I should pick somewhere else. It suggests, "New York City or Tokyo, instead". You would think they would realize that Tokyo isn't the easiest city for Americans to get to for their summer vacation, but maybe that's giving them to much credit.
I looked up Tokyo, as well. It's a 6,000 mile flight from Minneapolis, which would be an additional ~$48 in carbon cost by air. The article cheerfully states that going to Tokyo "isn't a sacrifice", as "the high-speed trains there are a tourist destination in their own right." OK.
Since EV cars are all the rage, another of their 'helpful' ideas is renting a Tesla through Hertz. Instead of using my gasoline-powered vehicle, I can cruise down to St Louis in a car powered by clean coal, common in the Midwest. Apparently Hertz bought a fleet of 100,000 of Tesla Model 3s (subsidized by the government, no doubt).
There's no mention of what the carbon footprint of these vehicles are in the article, but Googling it, I came up with an average of 0.22 pounds per passenger mile, or a carbon cost of $2.11 for the trip. That average seems to be based on a weighted average of electricity generation sources, not just coal. To achieve that savings, Hertz charges $78/day plus taxes and fees to rent the car, which is about 26x the carbon cost savings. No thanks.
The funniest recommendation from the article is a toss-up between "traveling in groups" or to just "stay put". For group travel, it cheerfully recommends that buses use only 0.39 pounds of carbon per passenger mile. That means instead of spending $4.81 of carbon to get to St. Louis in my car, I could instead spend $3.99 on a bus. A savings of almost a whole dollar.
Perhaps the greenest low carbon footprint trip of all is just to "stay put". I love that their low carbon travel trip is not to travel at all. Like that is a helpful travel tip. I guess they think the $4.81 in carbon cost to just drive to St. Louis should be enough guilt me into staying home.
Meanwhile, I'm sure the bureaucrats in Washington and people in the media that report these dumb facts will be flying to Tokyo and patting themselves on the back for planning a green vacation for themselves.
Where are you heading this summer?
Image: Midjourney Bot
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