days left for the ABC to cut emissions by 40%

Melting puffins?


Highway sign for airport

(Source: iStockphoto)

Any tips on how a green conscience can justify flying to Paris and Iceland? Not sure that I want to swim all that way. Is there a better way to ease that green conscience - and be more constructive - than offsetting the flight emissions?


Holidays are tricky all right - and a flight to Reykjavik with a stopover in Paris will chock up 10.7 tonnes of CO2 (which is almost half the annual emissions for your average Australian).

Offsetting is definitely the easy option - but if you're really into neutralising you could try and cut your emissions for this year by as much as the flight will produce.

You can easily assuage about 3 tonnes of guilt by switching to 100% accredited Greenpower. You might be able to cover the other 7.7 tonnes by going totally hardline - getting rid of your car (1.6 tonnes), only buying second hand stuff, and eating locally produced organic food.

But there's a much easier way - changing where you invest your money.

On average every dollar you spend equates to about 1.6kg of CO2 somewhere along the line (mining, production, transport of the thing).

So if you switch about $5000 of your super/mortgage/savings into more sustainable/ethical/environmentally focused funds, you'll go a long way towards making up for the extra 7.7 tonnes damage your flight does. Only drinking local vodka will help with the rest.

Tags: travel-and-tourism

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Published 06 April 2008