Round the World Unlimited

How about an Atlantic Appetizer? No, it is not a small dish or drink served before the main course. It´s a “taste of the Atlantic”, a tour starting in Europe (unspecified), taking you to delicious dinners in Lissabon, by flight, then to New York, by flight, from where you will lean back, taking in the amazing changing scenery on an Amtrak train to Toronto, then, by flight, to Reykjavik to hear your favorite band play in an active vulcano. And then, to really deserve all the laid-back, carefree, intercontinental flying, you will have to swim back “to Europe from Iceland”. No, i´m kidding. Still, do not worry, you will, of course, be taking one more plane from Reykjavic to the European mainland, (Icelanders, my Nordic brothers, I do consider you Europeans!).

Or what about a Sushi Sixty Six? No, it´s not an American highway diner version of the Japanese dish available anywhere in the world. It, also, is a trip, taking you from “Europe”, by flight, to meet lions and dragons in Singapore, then on to meet Buddha, samurais and geishas in Tokio. Und gestärkt geht´s dann rauf auf die Hügel Hollywoods: Sternenhimmel gucken: Then quickly off to the Hollywood Hills for star gazing. From Hollywood the trip continues by land, either bike riding with bisons!, (I love that idea), or driving a straight-six engine vehicle. (I would like to add the suggestion to ride a chariot of fire!).

The source of this jet-powered cosmopolitanism , a travel magazine published by the travel company STA and aptly named Round the World, suggests other exciting intercontinental itineraries such as Coral Connection and American King Meets African Queen. There is even an Access All Areas itinerary. As their motto goes “Round the World Unlimited”. Indeed: Around the world in no time. Propeller driven aircraft did not provide a lethal blow to the ocean liners and the distances between the continents. But the arrival, in the late 50´s, and further advance, of the jet powered airplanes, meant the death of distance. At least, to begin with, for the affluent. Nowadays, discount airline companies make it easier, for instance, for a Dane to take a holiday in Madrid at the other end of the European continent than to visit his own family a 5 hour domestic train ride away.

However exciting it feels to fly away to see lions and dragons in Singapore, or gaze at whatever kind of stars Hollywood has to offer, having read just a couple of the articles of this blog, you won´t be startled at the view i´m about to express. If you haven´t read any of my articles, I will have to warn you, It´s a view founded on reason!: The airplanes that enable this kind of travel are jet powered monsters roaming the world leaving a trail of destructive CO2-emissions heating up the Earth´s atmosphere to dangerous levels. Solutions in the form of technological innovation seem not to be just around the corner, so we will have to take a look at other alternatives.  

The Atmosfair Quota Solution

A combination of grassroots engagement, business innovation and governmental policies have made sure that wind and solar energy have long ago become big business, and at peak hours wind power has even reached a 100% supply of electricity to the grid in Denmark. Electric cars are taking over the streets of Norway. And veganism for partly environmental reasons seems to be spreading in various countries. But there is one type of human behavior that causes CO2-emissions to the atmosphere in much greater quantities than our car rides and our consumption of beef, and there is no grassroots movement, nor policies or effective business initiatives that address this on any significant scale.

In the article For the love of Earth, stop traveling, the author Jack Miles reveals his calculations of some of his air-travel related CO2-emissions and compared them with his household´s emissions as well as with those of the average American´s beef consumption. The results are: 8.400 pounds of CO2 from one passenger seat on a round-trip from Los Angeles to Casablance, Morocco. The total emissions of the trip was double that, 16.800, since his wife was accompanying him; the annual emissions from their household activities in Orange Country, California, including gas, electricity, transportation and waste disposal, amounted to 33.000; and the CO2-emissions from the average American´s beef consumption has been estimated to amount to about 1.300 pounds.

While you can always discuss the accuracy of, or methodology behind, such numbers, the significantly greater amount from this one trip compared to beef consumption, and the comparison with their household consumption – implying that the trip to Casablanca emitted just as much as half a year of their household activities – speak for themselves: air travel is by far the most efficient way of disrupting the Earth´s atmospheric system and causing the climate changes, which – if temperatures continue to rise as now – will cause a terrifying cascade of climate related catastrophes, much worse than what we are currently experiencing. Just ten days before the publishing of this article, 6/10 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, the world´s foremost authoritative assembly of experts on the scientific research on climate change, released a special report once again urging us to make radical changes to our economic system and our life styles.

Here is your air travel CO2 quota

Quick technological fixes do not seem just around the corner, but a few environmentally conscious individuals, however, have chosen not to fly anymore, or to cut down on their total flight activities. It is, of course, impossible for anybody without professional insight to decide, how much do we need to cut down on our emissions or the activities in case, in order to adjust our consumption patterns to become more climate friendly and sustainable. But the German interest organisation Atmosfair, has a precise suggestion for us: That each of us cut down our air travel to 3.100 miles a year. That is very close to 5.000km, and is equal, for instance, to one round-trip from Copenhagen to New York each 2 and a half year. Or from Berlin to Stockholm max. 6 times a year. The same carbon budget could also take you from Lissabon to Singapore once each five years. And you can easily “ecosia”, (perhaps you will now google that, but from then on you will now ecosia everything else that you used to google) any other desired itinerary of your choice. Obviously, any one of these choices, or similar ones, means you cannot just change your itinerary to some other destinations once your quota for the relevant time frame is spent!

The container ship option

Recently I took a look at my own travel activities in the past years. Taking 2015 as a point of departure, (the year of drafting the Paris Agreement) I had to realize that my air travel quota had been spent many years ahead, following Atmosfair´s suggestion. Since, occasionally, I get attacked by a severe travel itch, I have been looking into alternative ways of traveling across oceans. On land travel is no problem. You can ride a bike, take a train or bus, or, perhaps, an electric car. All these are much less damaging alternatives to air travel. But crossing an ocean not flying, now that´s a challenge.

The only realistic alternative to flying across an ocean is sailing across it. What, then, would it mean in terms of lowering one´s greenhouse gas emissions to take a cruise ship? According to the online magazine Grist´s eco-advice columnist Umbra Fisk, the cruise ship option emits even more per passenger mile (or km), than air travel. Since, mostly for reasons of safety, we must exclude low-tech options, such as rowboats and inflatable rafts, I can only think of one other alternative: going by container ship. The total CO2-emissions from such ships, plus other air pollutants are, no doubt, significant. But the load they carry, measured in terms of total weight, is also, no doubt, much greater than both passenger airplanes and cruise ships. So, perhaps, measured in terms of emissions per kg of the load, (whether human or cargo), the CO2 emitted because of a few passengers joining a container ship may be much lower than emissions from either cruise ships or airplanes. I don´t have the relevant comparable data to confirm this, but, as stated on the containership travel agency, Cargo Ship Voyages´ website, whether a cargo ship has 1 or 101 passengers, it will still sail, making the carbon footprint caused by the few kgs of passenger body weight minute compared to the tons of the cargo carried.

Meet Thorbjørn – the container ship traveler

Is it even practically realistic to cross oceans by means of container ships? Well, the “death of distance”, the very short time it takes to travel by air, does not apply to container ships. Departing, for instance, from Antwerp in Belgium going to New York, will take you about 14 days. So the container ship trip should be viewed as an experience in itself. The Dane Thorbjørn C. Pedersen is on a long-term trip around the world traveling aboard container ships only.

Thorbjørn travels as a goodwill ambassador for the Danish Red Cross, and is allowed on board the ships for free. However, it is, according to Thor, and in my own more limited and unsuccessful experience, difficult to be allowed onboard for free. If it is difficult even for a goodwill ambassador, then it may take some persistency, (Hartnäckigkeit in German) to be allowed onboard a containership for free. Having contacted the shipping company Maersk, it seems to me that especially security concerns make shipping companies reluctant to accept passengers. There is, however, at least one company, called Cargo Ship Voyages that offers designated container ship travels with various shipping companies. The prices of these trips are comparable with the more expensive plane tickets.

Stay-tisfaction…

The most climate- and environmentally friendly holiday is the staycation, staying right where you are. I therefore suggest an approach to flying more in line with pop music lyrics, joining Anthony Kiedis and the other hot peppers in making music your aeroplane, or travelling without moving like Jamiroquai. 

We do not only travel for vacations, however, and the stay- prefix could be useful in more ways than just combined with the word vacation. What about cultivating a general state of stay-tisfaction? Being satisfied with being where we are, the experimental saxophone player Jan Garbarek dedicated a 1985 song to the mission of being just where he were. Right here, (instead of there, wherever you are), we can explore the adventures and cultivate the relationships that can be found around us already. Slow down and talk some more with people around you; do some flaneuring or people watching or explore new places near you. Apart from the desire for the journey itself, for me the very idea of travelling by containership also entails the desire for stating an example. We do not only need to do the right things, we also need to communicate and discuss our choices with each other.

…and the action of not-flying at one of Berlin´s unique refugiums

I think, however, I have found a better option for such example stating. One opportunity which is for free, within reach by bike in about an hour from Berlin´s most central borroughs, and which provides the perfect symbol for the act of not-flying: going to Tempelhofer Feld. This is a pearl, a refugium within Berlin, and a huge one. It is one of the few, (the only one I know, at least), truly environmentally friendly and zero-emission airports. Today this former airfield is being used as a recreational space, crowded with climate friendly travelers, such as people taking a walk, with or without strollers, or riding their bicycles. And the only flying that takes place there, is guaranteed zero-carbon: crows taking off and kites being steered from the ground by Berlin´s children. And apart from the nice atmosphere at Tempelhofer, and the unique opportunity for symbolic action, I can go there as much as I want without the tiresome trouble of persuading shipping companies to take me onboard, making the companies´ employees hang up on me in impatience with my desire for discussion, and without paying roughly the equivalent of an expensive plane ticket to spent 14 days experiencing only waves and ocean views on a journey that would take me less than a day by plane.

Can you do some Foraging at Tempelhofer Feld?

I am sure this is the question that have been on your mind all throughout your reading of this article. And, yes, I have even found some wild edible plants at this generally barren land. This amazing place entails the options both for some small-scale foraging – for instance for walnuts and rosehips -, for committing to the act of not-flying, (or zero-carbon flying in case of the crows and kites), and not least: for lazing on a Sunday afternoon. Which I did just two days ago, when I guided a small group on the second of my foraging project Die Wilde Möhre´s tours, the first one I did to Tempelhofer Feld.