Travel wisely

Walk or cycle or take a bus or a train rather than drive a vehicle if possible. Think of buying a smaller car (to reduce emissions) or an electric one (if you can). Make flying the exception rather than the rule.

If the distance to the shops is not too great, consider walking or cycling. It will be good for your health … and good for the planet! Unfortunately as China has become more affluent, the trend is for her people to use cars rather than bicycles.

An average 1.6 L car produces around 140 kg of CO² per 1000km using only 60 kg of fuel (38).

This is a frightening amount, the extra mass coming from the oxygen converted in the process.

Now multiply 140 kg by the estimated one billion cars in the world and the impact is staggering (4).

SUVs produce more than 200 kg per 1000 km and a hybrid car can reduce emissions by about a third compared with a petrol equivalent, although the upfront cost is high. However, price comparisons are misleading given that the cost of pollution emitted by petrol cars is not factored into the pricing of these vehicles. Further, the pollution cost of all the transport required to bring all the car parts to the point of assembly, is also not included. Warrant of fitness testing for vehicles should include a test of emissions in all developed countries. It is a pity CO² is colourless; we might be more inclined to act if we could see thick brown fumes.

An electric (battery powered) vehicle in New Zealand would reduce a driver’s carbon footprint by 100% if clean energy such as hydro power was used to recharge the battery. If the power for recharging is supplied by an oil, gas or coal power station then the benefit would be marginal at best. It is encouraging that new cars are improving with respect to pollution as manufacturers have to meet higher emission standards. Unfortunately though, this has also coincided with a shift by motorists to buy larger SUVs.

Platinum converters in car exhausts help to reduce emissions, yet the benefits must be offset by the mining footprint costs, including those of energy. Similarly, the materials used in electric car batteries have an environmental impact. This illustrates that any process must be analysed from beginning to end to establish the overall footprint and whether it is carbon neutral or not. All mined materials should have to meet an acceptable environment impact standard and be tagged as such. An electric micro-car called the Tango is another possible solution. Should such a vehicle be adopted by all road users, more cars would be able to use highways during peak traffic times.

Greater use of public transport is the more desirable option. City councils though need to provide integrated, flexible and affordable public transport systems to encourage use. Using a train results in less carbon emissions compared with other forms of transport. If we calculate a train’s emissions as one unit per person, then a bus emits 3.3 times more, a car 9 times, an international flight 9 times and a domestic flight 13 times more (for the same distance). Short air flights are bad because the huge energy required for take-off is not off-set by the time spent in the sky (where much less fuel is used). Long international flights however, have the highest cumulative emissions. The increase in air miles from tourism has a growing carbon footprint as has sport, where senior rugby teams for example, play international teams every weekend for much of the year. Fast and aggressive driving also increases fuel consumption and emissions. To calculate your travel carbon footprint see (36). Again we must ask ourselves how big a car do we need? Given the speed limits, how much power do we really need? Other major contributors to the world’s travel footprint are the land, sea and air freight networks that use rail, trucking, shipping or aircraft.

Another alarming development is the growing of plants to produce biofuels by clearing of indigenous forest and by converting land previously used for growing food crops. This is not a green solution. People will go hungry because the land available for food production is decreasing and biofuel combustion does not reduce the world’s carbon footprint. It is a profitable industry for those at the top of the chain but often leads to exploitation of the poor. Losing indigenous forest reduces the CO²-absorbing and oxygen-generating capacity of the earth - this is because mature trees are much better at removing CO² than sugar cane or most biofuel feedstock crops (4). Also more land becomes degraded and sterile with loss of biodiversity.

In Indonesia alone 38 000 square kilometres of forest have been converted to palm oil plantations since 1996 (4).

The possibilities of hemp are examined later in commitment 9: Tread gently on the earth.

Just to illustrate the carbon storage potential of mature trees: the New Zealand Kauri forests have the potential to store up to 1000 tons of carbon per hectare (which makes the dieback disease which is destroying these trees so disturbing – it may be the result of climate change).