Travel is Unsustainable — and I’m Part of the Problem • Indie Traveller

I have a confession to make. I’m killing the planet.

I regularly hop on a plane to some far-flung destination — just for fun and because I feel like it. Barrels of kerosene are then burned on my behalf, blasting literal tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I do this dozens of times a year.

It should be obvious why this is bad. Climate change is the biggest challenge of our times, but my travel lifestyle is not exactly helping.

It depends on which carbon calculator I use, but my trips this year will likely have been responsible for emitting anywhere between 5 and 10 metric tons of CO2e.

That might be a bit abstract, so let’s put that in perspective.

Back home, I have a fairly low-carbon intensive life. I don’t own a car, I don’t eat much meat, and I get around Lisbon mostly by shared electric motorbikes. Good stuff!

But here’s my estimate for the past year, according to a UN carbon footprint calculator, which also shows how much of my carbon footprint is due to…