Where It All Began

Aviation and Ethical Travel (Series Article 4 of 5)

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What about alternatives to flying?


Globally, aviation pollutes less overall than road vehicles (2% versus 15%), and that’s because flying is for the majority of us a form of public transport.Just like any other form of public transport, it is a far better for the environment than private transport, when you look at from the perspective of kilograms of emissions per passenger mile.

Does the Earth love man?

Anthony T. Hincks

Experts agree that private transport is per mile far more polluting than public transport per passenger mile (ppm). So for example, a 5 seater car pollutes far more ppm than a 55 seater bus, a 10 seater private jet pollutes far more ppm than a 500 seater airliner and so on.And that’s assuming the 5 seater car is even full: normally they have only one passenger, so the ppm is even worse. 

Cruise ships (and container ships), unless they are driven by sails, burn what is called bunker fuel, an unrefined semi-solid waste product of crude oil refinement.Their ppm may be better than a car but in fact, cruise ships pollute more than planes (0.43kg of CO2 ppm on the QE2 versus 0.257kg for a 747). Trains and buses, particularly if they are hybrid or electric are without a shadow of a doubt way cleaner than planes, cars and cruise ships. The big problem with trains and buses is that they are not always available, safe or reliable in most parts of the world (even in wealthy countries) and are very costly to maintain in poorer countries.

This is not to say that aviation is in any way clean – but weighed up against everything except trains and buses, it’s not the worst choice you can make.

How about radical alternatives, like sailing?

It’s possible! As Greta Thunberg showed, you can and could simply sail to the places where trains and buses cannot go, such as across the Atlantic or to the tip of Africa.The problem is that sailing requires a crew, even if you know how to sail yourself, is enormously expensive and very slow.It takes for example not less than 3 weeks to sail to South Africa, one way.