I have a deep loathing of flying, and not only from an environmental perspective, it’s the whole unedifying, dehumanising process of flying that depresses me.\u00a0 From the arrival at the concrete monstrosity of the airport 3 to 4 hours before you intend to travel; through the endless monotonous queues that have people rifling through your\u00a0 toiletries and then demanding you\u00a0 take off\u00a0your shoes; belt; jewelery and any other metal accoutrements you may have hanging from your person and finally the cramped, souless aircraft where you are doubtless sat next to someone with personal hygiene challenges and a bad cold. Yuk<\/p>\n
I yearn for the days of glamorous, elegant travel by rail and sea where the\u00a0getting there\u00a0is as much fun as the holiday destination.\u00a0 Where you arrive refreshed and rested after an enjoyable journey.\u00a0 To this end\u00a0I try to travel by alternative forms of transport (to the plane)\u00a0as often as\u00a0I can afford to (both in cost and time).\u00a0 I have travelled through Europe by train and was fortunate enough to once take the Orient Express from Venice to London which gave me a taste for luxury, slow\u00a0travel.<\/p>\n
This year, after not indulging in a\u00a0‘long haul’ holiday for five years, I thought it would be an adventure to travel by sea across the Atlantic to the States.\u00a0 At the time\u00a0I didn’t really know if sailing there would be better or worse in carbon terms\u00a0than taking the plane, but as it takes nearly\u00a0a week and doubles up as a hotel, restaurant and all entertainment too, I thought it was worth the investment in carbon to try it out.<\/p>\n
Happily though,\u00a0I can report that crossing the ocean\u00a0on a transatlantic liner is actually better for your carbon footrprint than flying London to New York!<\/p>\n
Once onboard I enquired as to how much fuel was used on an average journey and was informed that an eye-watering 19 gallons of diesel a minute was consumed.\u00a0 Over the period of the journey, for us it was just less than 6 lapsed days,\u00a0 total diesel consumed was roughly 164,000 gallons.\u00a0 The passenger\u00a0capacity was about 2500 and the ship was nearly\u00a0full.\u00a0 All things being equal (and of course some passengers do have much bigger cabins than others), the footprint per passenger works out at about 800kgs of CO2 <\/sub>per crossing.\u00a0 When compared to an economy flight from London to New York, this comes in at 930 kgs (using a 1.9 RFI uplift).\u00a0 Hence you save\u00a0over\u00a0100 kgs per journey.<\/p>\n Of course you cannot really compare a 6 day journey on an ocean\u00a0liner to a 7 hour journey by plane, in any context.\u00a0 The trip aboard ship was a holiday in itself and all food, energy and entertainment was fuelled by the total diesel consumed.\u00a0 Whereas the flight is simply a 7 hour trial of\u00a0endurance.\u00a0 The crossing is obviously much more expensive than an economy flight to NY, but when you consider it includes 6 nights accomodation and meals, and is far more luxurious than turning right when you enter the aircraft, then it isn’t bad value.\u00a0 It’s also\u00a0probably cheaper than a business or first class air ticket.<\/p>\n So, from both\u00a0a\u00a0fun experience\u00a0and carbon-saving point of view,\u00a0I heartily recommend a sea crossing to the USA.\u00a0 Try it some time.<\/p>\n However, this is not to say\u00a0I am now recommending cruises as a sustainable form of holidaying.\u00a0 The crossing is simply an alternative way for getting from A to B where train and\/or bus is not an option.\u00a0 Whereas a cruise usually involves a flight to get you to where the cruise leaves from, then a meander around coastlines to different parts of a country or continent, then a flight back home again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have a deep loathing of flying, and not only from an environmental perspective, it’s the whole unedifying, dehumanising process of flying that depresses me.\u00a0 From the arrival at the concrete monstrosity of the airport 3 to 4 hours before you intend to travel; through the endless monotonous queues that have people rifling through your\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-transport"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1944,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions\/1944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}