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HomeRolf Stan­ge → Fly­ing and cli­ma­te

Flying and climate ...

… is a pro­blem, ever­y­bo­dy knows that. The pro­duc­tion of CO2 (car­bon­di­oxi­de) per pas­sen­ger and flight mile is immense. And alt­hough the Earth’s cli­ma­te sys­tem is very com­pli­ca­ted, it is now wide­ly accept­ed among­st rele­vant sci­en­tist­sts and in the public that human CO2 pro­duc­tion con­tri­bu­tes to cli­ma­te chan­ge with all its unp­lea­sant side effects (I could cer­tain­ly use stron­ger wor­ding here!) such as floods, extre­me wea­ther situa­tions such as hur­ri­ca­nes, heat and draught, wood­fi­re and so on. This will have tre­men­duous nega­ti­ve effects on socio-eco­no­mic sys­tems in most count­ries of the world, no doubt. It will at some stage, not so very far in the future, include you own coun­try and affect, direct­ly or indi­rect­ly, your fri­ends, your fami­ly, yours­elf.

Flying and climate

Exam­p­le:

  • Lon­don Gat­wick – Ushua­ia (whe­re trips to Ant­ar­c­ti­ca usual­ly start): 26,742km (return flight), CO2-Emis­si­on: more than 5000 kg
  • New York – Ushua­ia: 21,248km (return flight), CO2-Emis­si­on: about 4000 kg.
  • Lon­don Gat­wick-Lon­gye­ar­by­en (Spits­ber­gen): 6150 km (return flight)), CO2-Emis­si­on: more than 1600 kg.

All flight pas­sen­gers con­tri­bu­te stron­gly to the pro­blem, no doubt about it. But you can do some­thing about it. Sup­port envi­ron­men­tal pro­jects which are desi­gned to redu­ce CO2 pro­duc­tion direct­ly. If you fly long distance to visit the Arc­tic or Ant­ar­c­ti­ca and you are inte­res­ted in the con­ser­va­ti­on of the­se other­world­ly beau­tiful, but vul­nerable and glo­bal­ly very important eco­sys­tems, then the­re is hard­ly any way around it, if you think about it. Don’t you agree …?

Pro­jects:

I guran­tee that I par­ti­ci­pa­te to ful­ly cover the CO2-emis­si­ons for all my flights.

Cer­ti­fi­ca­te for the Ant­ar­c­tic sea­son 2012-13:
Zer­ti­fi­kat Dres­den-Ushua­ia (Argentina)/Invercargill (New Zealand)-Dresden

Cer­ti­fi­ca­te for the Arc­tic sea­son 2010.
Cer­ti­fi­ca­te for the flight con­nec­ted to the expe­di­ti­on to Newtontoppen/Spitsbergen, April/May 2010.
Cur­rent cer­ti­fi­ca­te for the Ant­ar­c­tic sea­son 2009-10.

And, of cour­se, it would also be an idea to think about ener­gy con­sump­ti­on at home, regar­ding air-con­di­tio­ners, traf­fic, …

last modification: 2014-03-30 · copyright: Rolf Stange
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