The Myth of the Carbon-Neutral Air Traveler?

By 2025, air travel could hurl nearly 1.5 billion tons of carbon annually into the environment—about a half of what the 457 million people at the 27-nation European Union currently emit. If you care about the environment, this is a terrible trend to ponder on an international flight.

I’m in Athens, Greece, now spending the holidays with my family but my flight from Denver, Colorado, did its small part to pollute the earth, producing some 5,243 lbs of CO2, according to the TerraPass carbon footprint calculator. I felt bad, to some extent, but air travel is the most efficient way to visit people and places when we’re on tight schedules. (And there are many other things we can do to be better eco-travelers until the day all planes can run on biofuel, but that’s another blog post altogether.)

Some airlines already offer travelers opportunities to buy offsets that would help pay for carbon-reducing projects or programs (and perhaps reduce their eco-guilt). And San Francisco International Airport is set to become the nation’s (and perhaps the world’s) first airport with self-service kiosks where travelers can swipe their credit cards to buy carbon offset credits.

It all sounds so easy ... maybe too easy. Some wonder if the SFO program, for instance, is legit. Others wonder if carbon offsets even work at all: If people think buying offsets lets them off the hook of guilt, will they ever change their profligate ways, like the Hummer driver in New Mexico who buys carbon credits just to get people off her back? Isn’t the point of modern environmentalism to inspire people to change rather than to accommodate their bad habits?

The folks at Cheatneutral.com formed their satirical website to showcase just how ridiculous they believe the carbon offset industry is: Cheatneutral asks unfaithful partners who want to “offset” their infidelity by paying someone else to be monogamous.

I’ve never bought carbon offsets and am still figuring out how they work, let alone if they work. I’m bummed by the idea of people erasing aero-guilt by swiping credit cards, instead of changing their lifestyles. But I wonder: For the moment, is it better than nothing? Renewable energy and conservation programs have a hard time getting funding as it is. Northwest (my airline of choice since college) just began a partnership with The Nature Conservancy on a carbon offset program which will, in its first project, conserve and reforest Louisiana’s Tensas River Basin.

At the very least, such a program raises awareness—the basic ingredient for any “green” travel. It won’t make any traveler (guilty or not) carbon neutral. But it’s a start.

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