Flights of fancy

by Jo-ann Hodgson in At home on 09.07.08

So, I recycle. I don’t own a car. I take a keen interest in community events. But I have an emissions admission to make.

I go out with someone who lives in another country. And that, however you look at it, is just so not green. 

But, what can I do? The chasing of the Irish boy is done, the commitment has been made and now it’s just a matter of logistics.

It took a while to lure said boy over to the UK since meeting on a press outing last September. But since March, when the relationship-defining trip from Dublin to London was made, the carbon calculator has gone crazy.

So far, we’ve hopped over the Irish Sea and back seven times. Bonds have been strengthened, one set of parents met (don’t tell the other set, they’ll be jealous) and introductions to friends made. So far, so good; but not so green.

From these ‘mini-breaks’ alone, we’ve clocked up 1.114 tonnes of CO2. One carbon footprint website suggests that offsetting this amount could cost from £8.36 by donating to the Clean Energy Fund, up to £23.50 through a tree planting project. However, as we wrote a couple of weeks ago, the value of such compensatory schemes is still very much up for debate.

It’s all adding up, but with flights from £20 return – if you’re lucky enough to get time off work and can fly on a weeknight – the lure of such high-emission jaunts is pretty irresistible. Especially if you’re on a promise.

I’ve tried offsetting this against my own activities. Neither of us drives. Does that mean it’s ok? And last year my summer holiday was spent getting down, and very wet and muddy, with nature at an eco campsite near Chichester. It had all the trimmings: an open-air long-drop compostable loo – surprisingly un-smelly – solar-powered showers and even sheep to cut the grass in the camping fields.

But then if I’m going to drag that up in my defence, I can’t conveniently ignore the other stuff. Our previous roles as overseas property journalists required us both, with much persuasion, to take all-paid-for trips to hot countries, during which we’d make the appropriate noises about property developments and spend the rest of the time soaking up the sun.

In my 18 months I managed to blag two trips to Portugal, where I was wined and dined and on the second met a rather nice Irish journalist, at a cost of 0.959 tonnes of CO2.

Thanks to the relative stinginess of my former editor’s press trip distribution, however, my foreign forays are a drop in the ocean compared to Mr International Traveller. Twelve months, twelve trips, 27 flights.  Yes, I’m sure it was just fantastic to be taken to and put up in Spain, Portugal, Germany, Panama, Amsterdam, France and Italy in the course of a year. And I’m not jealous at all, but that’s a big carbon footprint. In fact it’s 5.194 tonnes worth of carbon footprint. Eight trees please. £94.00, cough up.

Fortunately for the environment, our days as jet-setting property journalists are over. But this international relationship is still costing the earth, aside from my painfully large phone bills.

There’s only one thing for it, Irish will have to move to the UK, for the purely selfless reason that it will be better for global temperature trends.

IMAGE by Flickr user dogboneart