In the typical year, my family’s biggest source of CO2 emissions is—by quite a wide margin—air travel. We use a bit less gasoline than a typical American family, but we more than make up for it by travelling long distances to visit our family, scattered around the east and west coasts.
A few years back, I started strategizing about how to reduce our air travel. And I settled on a two-step plan.
Step one: convince my sister to move from San Jose to Seattle—which would not only mean that we could see much more of each other, but also save our families at least 2 round trips per year.
Step two: vacation close to home every other year, saving at least one cross-country round trip flight for our family of 4.
So this year, we put both steps into action. My sister will be moving into our neighborhood (yay!) and we decided to visit the Olympic peninsula rather than our families on the east coast. We’ll be flying a lot less as a result.
But as things have turned out, I’m not sure that our plans have saved a single drop of fuel.
My sister and I will soon live close enough to swap child care and borrow cups of sugar—for both of us, it will be both a treat and a relief to have family nearby. And luckily my brother-in-law’s employer was flexible; he was reluctant to change jobs, and they’re letting him work out of his company’s Seattle office. But—and this is the crux of the problem—they’ve asked him to fly back down to San Jose at least once a month to check in at the main office.
So instead of at least 8 annual round trip tickets between the two families (4 for us to visit them, and 4 for them to visit us) we’ll have at least 12 (all for my brother-in-law to keep his job). So sure, my attempt to save fuel worked for my family—but may have actually increased the total airplane fuel consumed by the two families combined.
Something similar happened with our family vacations. We camped on the Olympic peninsula—and consumed about 5 gallons of gas per person in the process. Fairly fuel-thrifty, as vacations go, especially compared with cross-country flying.
But (and it seems like there’s always a but) both my in-laws and my mother decided to fly out for a vist. Which was great: we missed them, and we wanted our kids to spend time with their grandparents. But overall, it meant that our families combined saved a single round-trip ticket.
I often wonder which is more important: aligning my own life with my values, or trying to change the system under which we all, individually and collectively, make our decisions. It seems to me that here’s an instance where the system matters more than the individual. Sure, I tried to make choices that would conserve fuel. But reality had other plans.
I’m not sure there’s a lesson here, really. But if there is, it may be this: if you want to really change the world, simply looking in the mirror may not be enough.
Michael
Clark, as far as I’m concerned, you still get kudos for doing the math. The point you bring up about the system reverting to the mean is key. I don’t know precisely what to do about it, but this post is a great illustration of the obstacle, and that’s something.
Cam Larios
Over the longer term, this situation still may wind up conserving a fair bit of fuel. Should your brother get tired of flying and decide to change jobs after all, he’s now positioned much better to find one in your area. Having both you and your sister in the same area may also make the area more attractive to your mother as a place to live.I live in hope that trying to align my life with my values exerts a tiny tug on the whole system. On a personal note, my own household’s going car-free a little sooner than we’d expected. Wish us luck!
Clark Williams-Derry
Good luck with carlessness, Cam!And yes, I hope that over the long term this will wind up saving fuel. My mom is already thinking about a retirement home nearby.I’m not counting my chickens yet, though. After all, once my mom moves here she’ll may try to fly back east a couple times a year to visit friends.
c-bird
Why don’t we use all that collective energy to get Boeing et al to develop planes that don’t consume/pollute so much so we can stop all this other who struck John?
sprice
How about just requiring carbon offsets from the air carriers? That will also raise prices and lower demand. The increase in price will reflect the externatities of their business. In a perfect world, economics actually works!
janeandfrank
All the comments above are constructive, but I think “Sprice” has hit the nail on the head. Planes are much less polluting now than even a few years ago, and manufacturers are working on the problem. Meanwhile, those of us who travel should be paying extra to some tree planting organization locally or in other parts of the world (eg Amazon). There are a few travel agents now that are pointing the way in this regard, by promoting carbon offsets, but airlines should help us all by taking a percentage of the fare and putting it into a carbon offset fund. I’ll bet “conservationist” passengers would be more inclined to chose such an airline over one that doesn’t.