From what's been pounded into my noggin, flying makes Mother Nature pissed. Booking our California flights last month, I entered our impending mileage into one of those calculators you can find on the interwebs that computes your carbon footprint. Not pretty. Knowing that I have logged well over hundreds of thousands of air miles since my first flight from the farm at 18, I've come to the conclusion that no matter how often I can avoid plastic water bottles, eat organic granola, or blow my nose into recycled sand paper based tissues, I pretty much negate any "good" that I do with my history of flying.
This brings to mind two things:
1) Ruling out a thousand mile bike ride to California, what can I do to make my travelling (specifically flying) more green?
2) What steps are the airlines taking to reduce their environmental impact...aside from, well, the uncanny ability of going bankrupt and shutting down?
As luck would have it, question two was partially answered at work today while I thumbed through the the current issue of the journal Nature. It features an infographic article entitled, "Flights of Green Fancy" by Katharine Sanderson. She evironmentally dissects a plane (not unlike the Airbus A318 I'm tightly but comfortably nestled into) and highlights new approaches to current and future airplane technology as it relates to construction materials, flight logistics, craft sizes, fuels, and engine and wing design.
Of note, Ms. Sanderson discusses a possible source of fuel that is cultivated by high-fat-content algae. Algae, of course, being an alternative to our current "box of Wheaties is now $8.59, oops, our bad" issue with biofuels normally eaten by humans. Unless I'm forgetting a human culture that is algae based. Anyone? Anyway, a rep with Airbus mentions in the article that "commercial flights will be powered by 25% biofuel by 2025." Which is a good amount of time for the Algae eating peoples of Patagonia to adapt.
Also mentioned is the future of new plane design. From what I gather, it will be a move away from a "tube with wing" composite construction to, well, just a ginormous wing. I remember seeing some schematics like these years ago for a civilian craft. Great for aerodynamics I'm sure. But let's see how my fear of flying goes when I'm just in a giant flying wing.
Finally, she illustrates how they'll replace metal in with lightweight composite materials incorporated into the structure of the plane. Less weight = less fuel consumption. Boeing is doing this with their new sexy lookin' Dreamliners with sexy lookin' windows and cabins.
Okay. So our future is giant wings made of sexy plastics that feed off algae. Hot. BUT, going back to my earlier two questions, until that time comes, what can I do to make flying more green? Well for now, I can do carbon offsets (do they really work?), patronize greener airlines (is there such a thing?), and, uh, not flying so damn much. Next up, greener airlines. Or is it green colored airlines?
-RD (Row 19, Window Seat A)
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Hmm.. last time I bought a carbon offset (never, I actually just priced it), it was surprisingly cheap? Has the price increased with the decreasing value of the dollar and rising cost of oil? I *KNEW* I should have voted for Ross Perot!
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