Questions and Answers

Hey Ben- love the blog and recently booked a flight on Iberia which indicated my carbon footprint for just that one flight is as much carbon as a year’s worth of driving.

My wife and I try to live ecologically responsible lives (as much as possible) and I wonder if you’ve ever calculated your (presumably astronomical) carbon footprint and what, if anything, you do to offset or address it.

The carbon footprint issue has been briefly discussed before here:
[URL]http://asklucky.onemileatatime.com/threads/carbon-footprint.3816/[/URL]

I’m not sure if Ben or one of the other contributors have discussed it. I agree it would be interesting to see what their thoughts are on buying offsets. [USER=4]@Lucky[/USER] [USER=7]@Tiffany[/USER]?

So, we try to avoid these types of discussions on the blog because people are [I]really[/I] passionate, and the conversation quickly devolves, but will try to address some of it.

To start, when you’re booking using miles, those flights are by definition operating on the margins — Ben booked his current trip to Taipei about 12 hours before departure. The plane was already flying, he booked one of a handful of unsold seats that would otherwise have flown empty. So that changes the “equation” a bit, which is something I don’t think carbon calculators really take into account.

Regardless, there are lots of things that we try to do to make up for the flights in other ways (and not really speaking for Ben or the others here, just sharing my experiences and observations):
[LIST]
[*]Ben lives in hotels, so all the building and electricity values are spread out as well
[*]Neither Ben or I own a car, or have to “commute” to our place of work. The others telecommute, ride bikes, or use public transit 95% of the time
[*]I buy local products whenever possible (I think that’s true for all of us), especially produce, and Ben rarely eats meat
[*]Of the six of us (not counting Ben), five live in environments/situations where HVAC isn’t required
[*]etc.
[/LIST]
Nothing is a perfect solution, of course, but I think everyone is aware, and does what they can where they can.