Perhaps a staycation is not what you are looking for this year. Perhaps you want to go out and travel to see Canada or the United States. So, how do you see the continent, but keep from creating too much carbon dioxide emissions?
There are several ways for you to travel to see the area around you. Here are the options:
- Walking: While this is a free and completely green solution, it is a bit hard to be walking a few hundred kilometers with the family so this is not a viable solution.
- Cycling: Again, completely green and relatively free, plus you can cover a lot more ground each day on a bicycle than you can walking. Sadly, it may be difficult to peddle a few hundred kilometers with the family to where ever you want to go, especially if you want to travel with a lot of items. Obviously neither this or walking is a logical solution.
- Car: Not very green and not very cheap, but you can use a car to get nearly anywhere in the continent. It is easy to use the car to travel with the family and millions of families do it every single year. However, the problem is that cars emit 118 grams of CO2 per kilometer, and that adds up to a lot of emissions if you are driving around the country. While driving a hybrid will help, this is not a very green solution when you have to travel a long distance.
- Plane: Very fast, but very environmentally unfriendly. You can travel anywhere in the world by plane, it is easy to do but you create a huge amount of emissions, roughly 148 grams of CO2 per kilometer. That may seem like it is only a bit more than the car but look at it this way. On average, you will go 500 kilometers with the car on vacation, which creates 59,000 grams of CO2 for the trip. A plane by comparison is probably going 2,000 kilometers on average, and that creates 296,000 grams of CO2 for the entire trip. As well, planes are more expensive than driving.
- Train: The train is a great solution. It is fast, easy and it only creates 44 grams of CO2 per kilometer. That means if you travel 2,000 kilometers, you will only create 88,000 grams of CO2 for your travels, much less than a plane and just a bit over what a car creates on a 500 kilometer journey. The only problem is the train is more expensive and does not provide access to every location.
The next time you decide to go on a long vacation, choose a train if you can afford it.
I am a professional writer from Rossland, BC, where I live with my wife Layla, writing books.
When I am not writing, or crusading for green causes, I spend my time walking through the mountains of my town and enjoying nature in a...
