Is Holiday Travel Bad For The Earth?

Today we got some bad news about climate change: it's happening faster than expected. If I'm one of the 38.4 million people hitting the roads and skies tomorrow, does this mean I'm going to make things even worse by adding more carbon emissions as I travel? Is trying to visit Grandma for Thanksgiving good for my tummy but bad for my Earth?

Quick answer: Yes. (Sorry.)

But what if we all gave it up for…say…a decade and just had teleconference holidays instead? Everyone stays put, dials in, tele-hugs the extended family, talks over each other constantly and listens to each other eat. Just like normal except you get to lower the volume anytime you'd like.

To get answers I went to Julia Cole, Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

JAMES: How much of an impact does holiday travel have on climate change?

PROFESSOR COLE: It’s hard to quantify that precisely, but what we can say is that transportation in general is about 30% of the carbon dioxide emissions that our country puts out every year. So travel itself is a big one. And of course when we think of holiday travel a lot of times it means getting on a plane – and flying is one of the biggest producers of carbon dioxide as well. So if you’re flying somewhere, chances are, for your own personal carbon output, it’s a pretty big chunk of that.

JAMES: So if everybody decided to stay put for a decade – nobody goes anywhere for the holidays, do you think that would make a real impact on climate change?

PROFESSOR COLE: Well, I don’t have the numbers to say quantitatively whether that’s true but my gut feeling is yes. Have you ever been to an airport the day before Thanksgiving? It’s a mad house, so I do think if people decided not to fly over Thanksgiving and not to drive over Thanksgiving that we would see a dip in our carbon emissions.

JAMES: Should people feel guilty about travelling around the holidays?

PROFESSOR COLE: I think there are steps people can take to minimize the carbon their travel generates. Of course, this year Thanksgiving is already around the corner so you’ve probably already made your plans and you know if you’re going to drive or if you’re going to fly. But you know, in the future, thinking about the most efficient way of getting from point A to point B can really help you reduce your carbon emissions. [You could] take a train, for example, if that’s an option rather than flying...Even driving a fairly reasonable distance is more efficient carbon wise than taking a plane.

PROFESSOR COLE: The other thing you can do if you’re driving is do some simple things like make sure your tires are fully inflated before you set off on the road because you can lose a lot of fuel efficiency just driving on underinflated tires. And think about which vehicle you’re going to take if you have a choice, and drive the speed limit because a lot of the CO2 that’s produced in transportation would be a lot less if we all stayed at 55 or below, so when you get up to really high speeds you burn a lot more CO2.

If you’d like to hear my entire interview with Professor Cole, including her take on...

- Why planes leave such a large carbon footprint, and

- The carbon footprint of Santa Claus (it’s the last question)

...you can listen to the entire interview here.

Happy Thanksgiving!