Title: Step Lightly, Please (Carbon Neutral Travel)
Author: Michael Tennesen
Source:  AUDUBON, July-August 2007 p89-92
Data Base: C

STEP LIGHTLY, PLEASE

(A growing number of websites can help you calculate and 
expunge the carbon footprint created by your wanderlust. But 
is it better for the environment if you just stay home? 
Sometimes.)
 

By Michael Tennesen

The view from my campsite atop a 13,000-foot ridge in the Andes 
Mountains, just inside Peru's Manu National Park, is at once 
breathtaking and troublesome. Out over the Amazon Basin, giant 
cotton tufts filled with vapor are rising up, amassing for their 
assault on the cloudforests below. For the next couple weeks I 
will be rambling beneath the forests' dense canopy draped with 
mosses and orchids, and witnessing a sampling of the 1,666 species 
of birds found here in the Andes at various times of the  year. 
At the borders of this national park, the trademark signs  of 
progress-trees logged for farmlands or replaced with groves of 
cultivated eucalyptus and pine-are inching closer. Above the tree 
line, the lands have been cleared for grazing. If these iconic 
forests are to survive, they may need to reclaim some of those 
lands. And that, too, is ominous. "The speed at which the 
climate is warming may require many of the tree species to migrate 
up the mountain faster than they are able," says Miles Silman, 
a biologist at Wake Forest University, who studies Peru's cloud 
forests.

Visiting natural places like this is one of the reasons I became a 
journalist. Yet I can't help but ask myself: Isn't my wanderlust-and 
therefore that of my readers-part of the climate change problem 
about which I'm increasingly reporting? Ecotourism, while educational 
and enriching, also contributes to the increasing emissions that are 
causing climate change. "One of the worst environmental acts a 
person can do is buying an airplane ticket," says Christina 
Cavalier, director of training and education for The International 
Ecotourism Society, a Washington DC-based non-profit. (The average 
coast-to-coast flight expends 1.23 tons of carbon dioxide per person.) 

Even without the flying, travel can be a significant source of 
greenhouse gas emissions. Lots of things we do-driving, staying in 
hotels, eating out, even buying souvenirs-have carbon tolls. Now a 
growing number of organizations are on hand to help travelers 
calculate their so-called carbon footprint and purchase offsets 
that go toward planting trees or supporting renewable energy sources 
that can in effect make travel "carbon-neutral," (one of 
the newest terms in the New Oxford American Dictionary). It's 
essentially the same as carbon trading-a concept most often 
associated with the Kyoto Treaty-and it's available to individual 
consumers, at the click of a mouse. 

Calculator websites abound, with prices and carbon estimates varying 
widely. I first log on to the website for Native Energy 
(www.nativeenergy.com), the company that Al Gore selected to zero 
out the carbon emissions created from making An Inconvenient Truth. 
Native Energy has an option on its home page that lets you calculate 
carbon emissions from flying, driving, taking busses, and staying in 
hotels. The mileage printed on my plane ticket shows I covered 10,505 
miles from Los Angeles, California, to Lima, Peru. Add to that the 
estimated 125-mile train ride to Macho Picchu, the 150-mile bus ride 
to Manu National Park, plus seven nights in a hotel, (five additional 
nights of camping are carbon free) and my carbon debt adds up to a 
total of 4.41 tons. Rounding up, I can pay $12 per ton for five tons, 
or $60, to offset my entire trip, while helping to fund the construction 
of alternate sources of energy, including windmills and methane generators.

When I try to replicate these steps on Travelocity, which now offers a 
Go Zero program, allowing customers to "zero out" carbon 
emissions generated by their flight, hotel, or driving, I am only 
given the option to make my trip carbon-neutral if I buy another 
ticket-making it impossible to comparison shop. The Conservation 
Fund's website (www.conservationfund.org) is more user-friendly. 
Though it asks me to input estimates about my annual travel, there's 
nothing stopping me from entering the mileage for just one trip. When 
I type in my air miles for Peru, it spits out a toll of 2.31 tons of 
carbon dioxide (slightly less than half the Native Energy estimate). 
For only $14.24 I can plant two trees, which over the next 70 years 
will take about 2.31 tons of carbon from the air and lock (or as 
scientists say "sequester") it into the tree. 

The Conservation Fund gives no estimate for cabs, trains, and hotels, 
but if I round out my total to 3 tons I will still only pay $17. The 
donation goes to plant native trees in once-forested areas (most of 
them protected lands in the Mississippi Valley). As I continue 
shopping, I find other websites that make it possible to expunge my 
carbon debt on the cheap: carbonfund.org charges $15.62 for its 
estimate of 2.84 tons for my Peru flight; co2.org calculates 2.37 
tons at 17 pounds sterling ($32.84 US).

Why such a big difference in price between Native Energy and these 
other websites? Wolfgang Strasdas, a professor at Eberswalde 
University, Germany, currently at the Center on Ecotourism and 
Sustainable Development at Stanford University, California, says 
one of the reasons Native Energy estimates are higher is because 
the company figures in a 2.7-fold increase for long-range flights, 
which typically travel above 30,000 feet. "At that elevation 
planes leave vapor trails that last for many years and increase 
the green house effect," says Strasdas. For this reason, he 
personally prefers to use Atmosfair (www.atmosfair.de), a German 
company that also includes the long-range factor into their 
emissions calculator, and tends to produce tallies much higher than 
Native Energy. (My flight alone from California to Peru was $125).

Jeremy Meredith is a real estate developer in Northern Virginia who 
travels a lot, having ventured to Viet Nam, Cambodia, Belize, Bolivia, 
and twice to Costa Rica in the last year and a half. After collecting 
the mileage totals from his various frequent flyer accounts, he chose 
the Conservation Fund's website to offset all of it for about $75. 
"I liked the fact that they planted trees to compensate for carbon 
emissions," he says. "Plus the Conservation Fund was highly 
rated in the articles I read." Some environmentalists point to a 
problem with carbon-offset programs that involve tree planting. 
"Don't get me wrong, trees are awesome," says Billy Connelly, 
Native Energy's Marketing Director. "But we keep introducing 
carbon taken from the terrestrial ecosystem-coal and oil-burning it up 
and putting it into the atmosphere. Planting trees doesn't address 
that." His company invests in new or start-up operations in 
renewable energy-an expensive process. (One new windmill can cost 
upwards of $1 million.)

Knowing that your money actually bought a tree or promoted wind power 
is another issue. The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is North America's 
only greenhouse gas emission registry, reduction, and trading system 
for all six greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), 
nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perflurocarbons (PFCs), 
and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). As a third-party certifier, CCX audits 
its members to ensure their carbon-trading claims are legit.

Increasingly, tour operators are doing the work for travelers by 
buying carbon offsets to compensate for the amount of carbon dioxide 
their trips produce. REI Adventures announced a carbon-neutral travel 
program last year (rei.com) Ski resorts from Vail, Colorado to 
Stratto, Vermont-with perhaps the most to lose in a warmer world-are 
buying renewable energy credits through Bonneville Environmental 
Foundation (www.greentagusa.org).

L. Hunter Lovins is the president and founder of the small 
non-profit Natural Capitalism Inc., in Eldorado Springs, Colorado, 
and a business professor at Presidio School of Management in San 
Francisco, California, which offers the first accredited MBA program 
in sustainability. When she jets between Colorado and San Francisco 
once a month to teach a class at the Presidio School in sustainable 
practices, Lovins always offsets her carbon emissions. Sometimes 
when she is attending conferences she is "triple 
carbon-neutral" because carbon-offsets are purchased by her 
company, the school, and the conference sponsors. "And yet I 
still feel guilty," she says. "Because I'm still putting 
carbon into the air."

Which brings us to the obvious question-is it better just to stay 
home? "Of course," says Lovins. "But that's not 
realistic. We want to drink from streams as yet unseen. I want to 
see the footprint of a snow leopard in Afghanistan. We need to be 
as conscientious as we can." Lovins points to small experiments 
in air travel with ethanol and hydrogen. She particularly likes 
Virgin Airlines' promise to invest $3 billion in alternative energy, 
including carbon-neutral fuel. "Offsets are better than 
nothing," she says. "But we need to come up with 
alternatives to carbon-based fuels."

In the meantime, it's important that travelers don't skip over 
making everyday transportation changes that conserve energy. 
"Carbon offsets need to be part of a holistic approach," 
says Martha Honey, executive director of The International 
Ecotourism Society, "in which we not only try to offset our 
emissions, but we decrease those emissions in as many areas as we 
can." Choices like walking or using mass transit instead of 
driving every day can add up to huge carbon savings. If you don't 
have access to public transportation, pressure your elected 
officials and let them know why. "In the United States we 
often complain that are options for travel are very limited," 
says Lovins. "But we don't have options because we don't 
demand them. Why doesn't the United States have a good trains 
system? Why aren't cities more pedestrian-friendly? These are 
not impossible dreams; we just need to start demanding them." 

Supporting local economies is another way to cut carbon emissions, 
and also make trips more memorable. When Lovins travels she likes 
to stay in bed and breakfasts because they not only employ local 
people and support local goods, they also save a portion of the 
heritage in the buildings they preserve. Environmental tourism 
groups agree: ensuring that the community profits from your presence 
and that they understand your commitment to its environment is key. 
Hire guides from the area. Eat regional in-season foods at local 
restaurants. And don't expect to eat foods from home. Anything that 
has to be flown in has a substantial price in terms of the CO2 
released to bring it to you. 

Despite its problems, travel can actually be a boon for conservation, 
adds Honey. "It's crucial to host communities and an important 
economic activity in developing countries. Plus travel is a learning 
tool, as well. It gives the traveler an awareness of the world and 
the environment, that you won't get from staying home watching television.


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