Environment
A Local Environmental Extremist
Tomislav Sloboda, a Toronto doctor, is on his second "carbon strike". He refuses to create emissions and thus refuses to get into a car or plane. When he traveled to Croatia, he boarded a boat instead of flying - a journey that took 8days rather than the usual half day by plane. Tomislav is also conscious and selective about the food he purchases. Is he taking things to the extreme, or is he doing what we should all be doing?
Just a few days ago, CBC joined the growing list of Canadian news broadcasters that have boarded the YouTube train. Most of what they've chosen to feature so far seems to be geared toward entertaining (with subjects like Spiderman, celebrity news, fashion, and cartoons) but I'm hoping they continue to upload more of what they are best at (news, documentaries, politics, etc). Welcome to YouTube, CBC!
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How romantic. Except that ocean going ships are also pretty big polluters. Did eight days of emissions from the likely bunker fuel burning ship match or exceed what a modern jet would produce?<br>
Even if these ships weren't polluting we're still stuck with an environmentally conscious class system where those with excess money, time, and flexibility can present themselves as role models while ignoring that many of these options simply aren't available to working class Canadians. <br>
It's nice that Sloboda could afford to spend probably twice as much as a plane ticket, and could afford a an extra week off work to do it. We should all be so lucky.
<a href="http://flightaware.com/analysis/allflights_movie.rvt";>PLANES</a> or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfoTVvhiGzE";>BOATS</a>
???
I determined freighters to use 6% of the fuel per km traveled than a freight plane...it's a difficult calculation and indeed a person uses more space etc than freight so it's not a trivial calculation and I don't know the answer ultimately, however the above is suggestive. Cruise ships on the other hand use far more resources than planes. I paid about $3000 which is indeed not affordable if you consider it only as a means of getting from A to B. As a holiday it is reasonable at about $190/day, includes nice accommodation, three meals a day, breathtaking land and ocean scenery and being able to wander the whole ship. With respect to how long it takes to have such a vacation - for the average person cars cost about 17% of their household expenditures ($7356/year or 2 months out of an annual work income of $43,000)(1), consider giving up your car and taking unpaid vacation of 4-6 weeks along with a regular paid vacation of 3 weeks and you might come out ahead.
The planet can sustainably absorb 1.5 tonnes of CO2 produced by humans per year per person. Canadians produce 16 tonnes per year per capita (10 times the amount that can be sustained by the planet). Return trip to Europe from Toronto produces 4.9 tonnes of CO2 per person, return trip to Cuba is 1.5 tonnes. (3) Driving a car for 5 days as opposed to 0 days produces an extra 1.5 tonnes of CO2 per person.(4)
...I'm still on this strike (22 months), hope to be part of a bigger group doing this...I agree with those who say it's not extreme. It is unusual and challenging at times - but mostly socially inconvenient given the current culture. Current car and plane culture is extreme...there's a facebook group called "carbon strike!" if you are interested in joining or discussing with an interested group.
Hope that helps, thanks again for the discussion!
t
see:
(1) http://www.bikesatwork.com/carfree/cost-of-car-ownership.html
(2) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change WG1, 1995, The Science of Climate Change: Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Second Assessment Report of the IPCC, Eds J T. Houghton, L.G. Meitra-Filhho, et al
(3) http://www.chooseclimate.org/flying/mapcalc.html
(4) http://www.onelesstonne.ca/