Let's talk about carbon.

Strangely enough, no one I have spoken to about this trip has questioned that me, an environmental rep fro Prospect, is flying to South Africa for two weeks, with apparently no thought to the environment.

As I am sure everyone knows, flying is a pretty carbon heavy activity; figures vary greatly, but lets go with the BBC's; aviation currently accounts for approximately 4% of greenhouse gases, [but] scientists believe that figure will rise to over 60% by the year 2050.

I did one carbon calculation here, which gave me CO2 emissions of 3.11 tonnes ( I did use the DEFRA reccommended radiative forcing of a 1.9 multiplacation). The question is, what do I do about it? I do not believe in "offsetting" in the traditional sense, because I feel that there is too much uncertiantly in "funding an equivilent carbon saving somewhere else." I would rather just reduce my emissions full stop. In this case, I think I do need to do something to offset the carbon I will benefit from in flying to South Africa. The question is how? Carbon offsetting as a largely unregulated industry. There's also the problem that if I buy a tree, someone is going to have to make sure it stays alive, forever, otherwise, it just releases more carbon and I can't handle the guilt. I may go with Equiclimate, a bunch who friends have supported for a few years and one of the four (yes FOUR) projects who subscribe to the Government's voluntary standards on Carbon Offsetting. (This means that anyone else may do whatever they like with your money). I might not, I might donate directly to a charity who work in related fields. Do any of you have suggestions for me?

Some more info for you, taken from here.

There are three gases emitted by aircraft which contribute to global warming: H2O, CO2 and NOx The most obvious is the water vapour which forms condensation trails. Since the air in the upper troposphere is naturally very dry, water vapour emitted by aircraft can make a big difference.

Although these contrails reflect a little sunlight away from earth, they reflect back to earth much more invisible infra-red radiation which would otherwise escape to space -and therefore they have an overall warming effect. This is hard to measure accurately, because the contrails eventually spread out and become indistinguishable from natural cirrus clouds.

Jet-fuel - kerosene - is a mixture of substances produced by distilling crude oil, which can be represented by C13H28. The chemical equation for burning it is as follows:2C13H28 + 40O2 =>26CO2 + 28H2O

So you can see, that for every 14 water molecules produced, the aircraft must also emit 13 of CO2. This is also a greenhouse gas and will stay in the atmosphere warming the earth for an average of 100 years, some of it for 1000s of years. There's no way that you can get the energy from such fossil fuel without producing that much CO2. It's not a by-product that can be "scrubbed" from the exhaust.

A Boeing-747 can burn over 200 tons of fuel in one flight. A simple "rule of thumb" to remember, is that a plane uses about as much fuel, and therefore produces about as much CO2, as would every passenger driving one car the same distance. So next time you're thinking of flying thousands of miles, think how much petrol you would need to put in a car to go so far. Since take-off uses a disproportionate amount of fuel, short-haul flights emit a bit more per passenger-kilometer, and long-haul flights a bit less. Note: the car comparison is for typical European cars, not for the less efficient American gas-guzzlers. Trains produce, on the other hand, about 1/3rd as much CO2 per passenger-kilometer and could potentially be run from renewable sources of electricity.