'I'm a Climate Scientist Who Doesn't Fly'

[Oscar]

'I'm a Climate Scientist Who Doesn't Fly'

[ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/02/17/Cl ... ign=170216 ]

It took three years to quit air travel. Here's one man's carbon-cutting journey.

By Peter Kalmus, YES! Magazine February 17, 2016

EXCERPT:

A post-carbon future

I experienced a lot of social pressure to fly, so it took me three years to quit. Not flying for vacations was relatively easy. I live in California, and my wife and I love backpacking. We drive on waste vegetable oil, but even normal cars are better than flying. Four people on a plane produce 10 to 20 times as much CO2 as those same people driving a 25 to 50 miles per gallon car the same distance.

My wife and I drive 2,000 veggie oil miles to Illinois each year to visit our parents. Along the way, we sleep under the stars in the Utah wilderness. This is adventure travel, the opposite of fast travel, and it has deepened my relationship with my parents. After such a journey, I more easily see how precious my time with them is.

Not flying is an ongoing challenge as I progress in my scientific career, but I'm finding that I can thrive by doing good work and making the most of regional conferences and teleconferencing. Not flying does hold back my career to some extent, but I accept this, and I expect the social climate to change as more scientists stop flying.

In today's world, we're still socially rewarded for burning fossil fuels. We equate frequent flying with success; we rack up our "miles." This is backward: Burning fossil fuels does real harm to the biosphere, to our children, and to countless generations -- and it should, therefore, be regarded as socially unacceptable.

In the post-carbon future, it's unlikely that there will be commercial plane travel on today's scale. Biofuel is currently the only petroleum substitute suitable for commercial flight. In practice, this means waste vegetable oil, but there isn't enough to go around. In 2010, the world produced 216 million gallons of jet fuel per day but only about half as much vegetable oil, much of which is eaten; leftover oil from fryers is already in high demand. This suggests that even if we were to squander our limited biofuel on planes, only the ultra-rich would be able to afford them.

Instead, chances are that we'll live nearer to our friends and loved ones, and we won't be expected to travel so far for work. Those both seem like good things to me.

With the world population approaching 8 billion, my reduction obviously can't solve global warming. But by changing ourselves in more than merely incremental ways, I believe we contribute to opening social and political space for large-scale change. We tell a new story by changing how we live. [Tyee]

Read more:

Energy: [ http://thetyee.ca/Topic/Energy/ ]

Environment: [ http://thetyee.ca/Topic/Environment/ ]

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Dr. Peter Kalmus wrote this article for [i]Life After Oil, the spring 2016 issue of YES! Magazine. [ http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/life-after-oil ]

Peter is an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (speaking on his own behalf) and a contributing editor for YES! Magazine. This article draws on material from a forthcoming book about our interconnected ecological predicament. A working draft is available to read here: [ http://becycling.life/ ][/i]