Carbon Neutral Travels

Those who read my previous post about watching An Inconvenient Truth on a flight back to Hong Kong from JFK will know that I stopped driving in Hong Kong because of this film. Of course, there was a bit of irony in the fact that while I was watching this film about the climate crisis, I was contributing more than 3 tons of CO2 to the atmosphere.

I was reading the online preview of this Sunday's (10 December 2006) New York Times Magazine and came across Michelle Higgin's article, Carbon Neutral: Raising the Ante on Eco-Tourism. It got me thinking about how much CO2 production my travel planning business enables each year. Most of my friends and clients would probably qualify as globetrotters who contribute at least 11 tons (or 22,500lbs) of CO2 each year from their flights (To qualify for Marco Polo Club Gold Status, you need to fly 60,000 miles). Now, there's a way to offset these carbon emissions and theoretically make one's jet-setting carbon-neutral (would also need to factor in hotel stays and drives). To calculate how much CO2 is produced, check out this calculator from Sustainable Travel International (STI also allows you to offset by buying CO2 offsets from myclimate.org). The article also mentions terrapass.com, which also has a very user-friendly site.

I did a bit of comparison shopping between the 2 sites for the cost of offsetting a round-trip Hong Kong to London Heathrow flight:
terrapass.com calculates the flight as 11,959 miles, emitting 4,664 lbs of CO2. From their site, I could buy 2 packages, each offsetting 2,500 lbs of CO2 for US$9.95 each. The total cost: US$19.90.
sustainabletravelinternational.org (partnering with myclimate.org) calculates the flight as 19,286km (roughly 11,984 miles), emitting 3,68 tons (roughly 7,360 lbs of CO2). From their site, a total offset would cost US$48.76.
As would be expected, the Europeans are stricter with their calculations than the Americans.

Now I know what I can get all my ski-bunny, performance car-driving, jet-setting friends and family for Christmas. Also, from 2007, WANLILU Play will use STI's calculator (because a report published by Clean Air-Cool Planet, released on 5 December 2006, ranks STI/myclimate.org as one of the "top performing" providers of retails carbon offsets. For a great discussion of this somewhat controversial report, check out this blog entry on World Changing's site) to calculate the amount of CO2 emissions for all the flights our clients. For clients who choose to buy carbon credits, we will match their carbon offset purchases up to 10% of the fee we charge for planning their trip (our minimum planning fee is US$1,000 per trip). Of course, I will do the same with my travels.