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Photo by Horia Varlan

On a blog about green travel, I wanted to bring up the issue of flying sooner rather than later.

It’s hard to avoid air travel when your friends or family live across the country, you want to experience a drastic change in culture and temperature, you have an important (environmental?) conference to attend, or you’re being offered discounted flights.

I’ve taken a total of 15 round trip flights for work and pleasure in the past five years, emitting more than 23 tons of CO₂. And since planes travel much closer to the ozone layer than ground transportation, the negative impact is more than doubled. Eek. You can calculate your own air travel emissions here or here.

Short of never flying again, what can we do?

• Consolidate. With some schedule wrangling, sometimes it’s possible to combine two trips into one. Making your trip into three legs instead of four can reduce your emissions. Direct flights are also better than those with layovers.
• Pack light. The more weight an airplane has to carry, the more fuel it goes through.
• Choose airlines wisely. Virgin America may be one of the best options for domestic flights.
• Be aware. If you think about your carbon emissions rather than wishing them away, maybe you’ll be inspired to make your vacations more local, travel by train and bus, and make careful decisions when splurging.

What about buying carbon offsets? I don’t think that donating to environmental projects justifies unbridled air travel, but the programs do provide an easy way to contribute. Make sure you’re thinking about your carbon footprint in your everyday life too.