Paul McCartney’s Lexus: a drop in the ocean
by Simon Handby in Your car on 15.05.08
If you’re a car company keen to boost your green credentials, what better way to reward a high-profile advocate than with a shiny new eco-car?
Unfortunately, it’s not such a great idea if the car in question is a 21mpg limousine, and it arrives on a plane all the way from Tokyo.
Sir Paul McCartney, the advocate in question, was widely reported to be horrified that his Lexus LS600H didn’t arrive by sea. I’m not surprised: according to figures from carbon offsetters CO2balance.com, it would have been less polluting (though tricky) to just drive the car from the factory. And back again.
Seven times.
In fact, I’ll admit to being sceptical of CO2balance’s figures, which say that shipping the car by, er, ship would have wafted just 397kg of CO2 into the air.
Sending it by plane, on the other hand, belched out 38 tonnes of the stuff – 96 times more. Doesn’t anyone else remember the story that maritime freight is twice as polluting as air freight?
Well, yes, it was on the BBC after all. But the shipping industry subsequently pointed out that ships carry 90% of the world’s trade, and that the figure was for total emissions. When you look at emissions per tonne of freight, boats come out rather better – at least 39 times better, in fact.
CO2balance were kind enough to show me their calculations which, depressingly, seem right. In fact, depending on how much weighting you give to the non-CO2 environmental impact of aviation, you could argue that flying the car to London had a warming impact two hundred times higher than shipping it.
The problem, as with so much climate science, is that no-one knows exactly. And that, even by the most optimistic estimates, flying one car from Japan to England is just a drop in the ocean.
IMAGE by Flickr user James Gordon
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