Flying is likely the most climate-warming activity any of us ever engages in.
Air travel is responsible for about 5% of global warming–a tremendous amount considering only an estimated 5% of the world’s people fly at all each year.
People who fly often have carbon footprints that are many times larger than the 80% of the world’s population that will never set foot on an airplane. For example, the CO2 emissions per passenger from a single round-trip flight from SF–>Europe equal the annual carbon footprint of average resident of India.
Why is flying so green-house-gas intensive?
Air travel causes climate change both in its direct emissions of CO2, as well as in contrails, those wispy white tracks airplanes leave in the sky. Read more about this effect at this link.
In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, flying is roughly equivalent to each passenger driving his/her/their own single-occupancy vehicle the same distance being flown.
The average American drives approximately 13,000 miles per year. That is about the same distance as one round trip flight from San Francisco to Rome.
This means that in only a half a day of flying, we can emit as much CO2 as we normally would in a year’s worth—or more—of driving, and hardly notice.
What you can do:
- Fly less and only when truly needed. Family emergencies and life events happen that warrant flying, but by cutting out unnecessary flying can avoid a major contributor to one’s carbon footprint.
- Make a West Coast vacation bucket list! There are so many wonderful places to visit in the Western US, all reachable by car. Yes, some of destinations require a lot of driving, but these trips will still be much lower in emissions than an intercontinental flight, especially if more than one person is riding in the car.
- Talk with your employer about minimizing work-related flying (citing your concerns about climate change and efforts to reduce your carbon footprint, if helpful). One side-effect of the Covid-19 pandemic is that we learned how many meetings we didn’t really need to attend in person after all!