Travelings fun, you could hop on a boat to Bolivia, a plane to Peru or even take a dog
sled to Dubai. Okay, maybe not that last one, or the first one actually. But you get the
idea, you can travel to a lot of places, and see a lot of weird and wonderful things, like
Iceland's very own phallus museum. However, most forms of transport, just like the US
foreign policy, take fuel. So, in our modern, penis museumed, ecologically doomed world,
what's the cleanest way to travel?
Climate change is a serious problem, that is if you believe it's real, and even if you
don't why would you worry about it? When the oceans rise they'll just create pretty waterfalls
of the edge of our flat Earth. Right?
Everyone knows what climate change is and most sane people agree that humans are causing
it. The average American produces 16,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide every year. To put that
in perspective it would take more than a 700 trees to offset that and it's equivalent weight
of around 3 elephants or 1.6 billion dollars in $100 notes, which is by the way enough
to build around 500 commercial sized wind turbines.
So, how much of these carbon emissions are being caused by transport. Firstly, it's worth
noting that the transport sector is way behind the biggest polluter, electricity and heat
production, which creates just a touch under half of all the emissions globally. However,
transport does take the silver medal in climate pollution, contributing just over 20% of the
global emissions in 2014. But let's split this down and see how guilty I can make you
feel about that European holiday you've got coming up.
It probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise that air travel is the worst form of travel
for the environment and not just because they kill 10,000 birds each year in the US alone.
There are varying rates of carbon pollution for different types of flight, but overall
it’s several times worse than other forms of transport. Which means this woman is basically
a carbon machine. Flights produce around 1.5% of the global CO2 emissions, which doesn’t
sound like whole lot. However, this figure doesn't give you the whole truth at all.
Firstly, that 1 or 2% of global CO2 is heavily concentrated in the countries that have the
money to fly around. According to the UK’s department for transport the value is actually
somewhere nearer 6.3% for the UK and that data is from all the way back in 2005 back
when Hollaback Girl was number one. There are also all the other parts of the process
like the production of fuel, transport of parts and of course the building of the four
storey slide that every airports got to have. The third thing to take into account is that
it’s not just CO2 that is given off by planes. The water vapour and soot create trails, and
as the Guardian says, the science behind these isn’t fully understood but they’re thought
to contribute to climate change one thing we’re pretty sure about is that they’re
not (turning the frogs gay clip). That’s all on top of the 285 grams of CO2 already
pumped out per passenger kilometer, it’s estimated that the proportion of UK pollution
caused by aviation is closer to 15%. That’s a crazy amount considering the average Brit
only takes a short haul flight every two years and a long haul flight every 5. So, as with
many things, we have to look to the ‘less average’ aka pretty the wealthy people to
see a lot of this pollution. Obviously, flying more often is a big contributor but also the
amount of people on the plane makes a difference. Making business and first class tickets much
worse for the environment. This also means that airlines like EasyJet and Ryanair are
better for the environment, because they cram as many people into their planes like they’re
a James Charles event. Oh, too soon?
Next up are road vehicles, which create a huge 72% of the transport CO2 in the EU. However,
a substantial amount of this comes from transporting goods rather than people. This is shown in
other sectors too. International ship traffic, almost all of which is goods transportation,
is estimated to contribute nearly double the amount aviation does globally. Back in 2009
it was claimed that the 15 biggest ships in the world emit as much pollution as all the
cars combined. Although this sounds bad, it is by far the best, most efficient way of
doing it. If this cargo was flown it would produce 145 times the amount of co2. Back
to road traffic, the amounts of co2 produced varies by car, engine and number of passengers
but as a guide a small car with four people in would create 42g per passenger kilometre
whereas if you didn't have enough friends to fill the seats you'd be looking at a number
much higher.
Every pensioner’s favourite the bus comes in a little worse than a full car but much
better than a less full car at 68g of co2 per passenger kilometre.
Now, I bet that if you cycle or walk a lot you’ve been looking down on all the filthy
carbon producers so far. But there's data that suggests that neither of these activities
are truly carbon neutral. Cycling is pretty simple, you have to get the bike, that's made
of metal and you probably got shipped to you from somewhere. With walking I have to do
a bit more maths to make you feel bad. Basically, the idea is that if you walk to a shop rather
than driving you use a lot more calories and if you like certain foods replacing these
calories might be as bad or worse for the environment than it would have been to just
drive to the shops in the first place. The European Federation of Cyclists puts the CO2
per KM level for cycling at 21g once they had included recuperating the lost calories.
However, if we look at the CO2 created purely from the act of travelling itself we get the
clear picture that the bane of every commuters life, the train, is by far the most efficient
way of travelling. So actually, when you're crammed on the train or underground every
day it's probably just because they're trying to be more fuel efficient and nothing about
the money. Because of their high passenger numbers trains only cause 14 grams per passenger
kilometer which is less than half of the next form of motorised transport. Amazingly, that
cycling report puts the average greenhouse gas emissions for just the fuel a cyclist
needs at 16g per KM, so, in theory it creates less pollution to get a kilometer on a train
then it does on a bike. However, this doesn’t factor in any of the, often poorly organised,
infrastructure around the rail network and therefore all in all cycling and walking unsurprisingly
win out.
So, what can we do about our transportation emissions, I say just stay at home and vegetate
watching Jeremy Kyle, oh, I guess we better do something about it then? For road traffic,
it comes down to making cars more efficient e.g. not using fuels that we secretly knew
were worse for years, sharing cars more often and eventually switching to electric powered
cars. Some countries have set deadlines where fossil fueled car production will be outlawed.
In the UK the marker is set at 2040 but most environmental groups say this isn’t nearly
soon enough and with the average age of a car in the UK being 8 years it’ll take us
to nearly 2050 before we really start seeing all electric traffic. For international shipping
and aviation the ways forward are surprisingly similar. There are improvements to be made
to the efficiency of these vehicles, if they were to make their trips more slowly and plan
them more carefully then this could knock off another chunk of emissions and there are
more ambitious ideas to get these industries to embrace solar technology to power the onboard
amenities.
Until all of that happens, you’re best off walking, cycling or using efficient public
transport like trains to get around if you want a clear conscience. One thing I can tell
you is that you shouldn’t ride around on the back of a cow because these bad boys push
out 70-120kg of methane every year. Although saying that, using some pretty dodgy maths,
I reckon they’re still more efficient than getting a plane.
Thanks for watching my video, make sure to like and subscribe if you enjoyed it and stick
around for plenty more to come. Let me know if you have any video topic suggestions, what
you think about transport emissions and if they should bring back Jeremy Kyle.