There's no way around this one: travel by air is bad for the environment. I recently went to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, which was a fantastic experience for a great number of reasons, but in the end I couldn't help feeling guilty for inflicting a sizable carbon footprint, ostensibly in the name of a green news site, no matter how many light rails and buses (and bikes and sidewalks) I took when I got there.
So how do we reduce the impact of air travel?
Well, here's a start -- a company claiming to be the first green airline. Sure, they only go between Portland and Seattle (which gives them a serious head start in the green thing) but, well, here:
The airline, which opened up shop in June and uses a fleet of three small planes to shuttle passengers between Portland International and Seattle's Boeing Field, has partnered with the Columbia Land Trust, a big name in Pacific Northwest land conservation, to offset all emissions generated by its flights.
Rather than buying into a traditional offset scheme, SeaPort is getting green by donating the cash that it would otherwise spend on offsets to the Columbia Land Trust's Working Forest Initiative, which works to save large tracts of forests in the Northwest from commercial development.
But where the PC-12 really shines is in its fuel consumption, or rather its lack of fuel consumption. The average flight burns just 51 gallons, which means that even a small upstart like SeaPort can afford to throw down cash for the emissions it cranks out.
So let's see, on the road, that's 174 miles, the car sitting my parents' garage gets about 24 miles to the gallon, that's 7.25 gallons, times nine passengers, that's 65.25 gallons, so if we were all driving identical copies of my well-loved 1994 Volvo 850, separately, yeah, it's actually better to fly SeaPort.
Of course, you start carpooling and things change.