Carbon hacking: Least carbon-intensive traveling between US and Europe
My life is split between the US and the Netherlands, where I have friends and work in both places. I try to fly as little as possible: only one intercontinental flight per year. But even that puts...
My life is split between the US and the Netherlands, where I have friends and work in both places. I try to fly as little as possible: only one intercontinental flight per year. But even that puts my individual carbon footprint far above the average human's. I buy carbon offsets but that just shifts responsibility.
I've long been deeply inspired by Greta Thunberg's protest act of sailing from England to New York to attend a 2019 climate summit. But sailing across the ocean in a racing yacht with a crew simply is too extreme.
So I'm curious what are the options for reducing carbon emissions when traveling between continents.
I've contemplated hopping on a freighter ship. My thinking is that: freighter ships are extremely efficient cargo-weight-to-emission ratio-wise, so the marginal carbon emission of me as added 'cargo' must be much lower than as another passenger on an airplane. Plus, the freighter ship will be sailing with or without me on board; whereas as a plane passenger I enable the business of a passenger flight.
I think that the tightening labor market and recent rises in consumer and gas prices are good things in the long run. It's true that America is a country of immigrants; but on the flip side, America has also long relied on its immigrants to fill its endless underclass of cheap labor.
It's time that we mature toward a balanced, sustainable, and equitable labor model that doesn't assume that immigrants will continue to pack into boarding houses to work as our cooks, cleaners, washers, farmhands, and so on so we can have our cheap eats and services. Not to mention that the rest of the world is rapidly progressing. Mexico and China are now solidly middle-income countries with plenty of economic opportunities for their people. So the spigot of desperate immigrants will continue to tighten.
I've been seeing businesses posting unskilled jobs all the way up to $25/hr (in the Bay Area). I see people starting to cut back on consumption and driving โ a boon for our environment. For too long we have enjoyed materially prosperous lifestyles by exploiting labor and nature. Maybe we should be like Norway and Denmark and have a fast food burger that costs $9 instead of $6.