By forcing through the text without removing these loopholes, developed countries would be allowed to emit millions of tons of new carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions without accounting for them. This would lead to a major deviation from emissions reductions demanded by science and would have catastrophic consequences for developing countries and future generations.

International youth observers at the UN conference responded to the threat of the text being finalized with these disastrous loopholes by launching a campaign to alert negotiators to the irresponsibility and unacceptability of such a decision for young and future generations.

Danny (UKYCC) Hiding from the LULUCF Emissions Accountant

To begin the campaign on Tuesday morning, we greeted negotiators arriving for the day with a hide-and-seek game between youth dressed up as greenhouse gas emissions and inept emissions accountants unable to find them for lack of trying. The 12 of us dressed up as tonnes of greenhouse gases and hid behind trees and camoflauged themselves with twigs outside the conference center as negotiators arrived. Meanwhile, two fumbling accountants attempted half-heartedly to find and enter the hidden emissions into the books while engaging delegates to explain their inability to find the emissions, often in plain sight, given the problematic rules in the current text that make accounting voluntary.

Hannah (UKYCC), not very good at accounting for emissions

In the afternoon, we followed up with two more actions. First, we asked delegates to throw small balls, each labeled as a tonne of CO2, through a LULUCF loophole to “make them magically disappear”. Balls that made it through the loophole were met with boos. We, representing the youth and future generations, then had the burden of dealing with them, sometimes throwing them back with demands that every emission should be counted. Also in the afternoon, we hid small sheets of paper that said “Congratulations! You’ve just found one ton of hidden LULUCF emissions. Please bring it back to the 350.org/SustainUS booth so that it may be accounted for,” all around the conference center.

Delegates throw emissions through LULUCF loophole to be dealt with by young and future generations

On Wednesday, several youth carried a giant cardboard cut-out of a chainsaw through the Maritim Hotel, where the conference is taking place. With “LULUCF Logging Loopholes” written on it, the chainsaw represented a tool for deforestation without accountability for the emissions generated by it.

These logging loopholes in the negotiating text would allow developed countries to hide emissions so that they can pretend they are not there. But at the end of the day, these emissions from land use and forestry are still real greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere, and they need to be counted and reduced to help ensure a safe climate for today’s youth and for our children and grandchildren.

Image credit: http://www.magic-mural-factory.com/

Knowing that flying accounts for 2-3% of global CO2 emissions, I’ve been rather anti-flying in recent years.  To get to Germany, of course, I had no other choice (smuggling myself onto a freight boat or getting up to Alaska and then taking the trans-Siberian train across two continents weren’t really feasible… and molecular transport does not yet exist). Once I got here and had a bit of vacation time, though, I reverted to my anti-flying ways and I decided not to fly to visit a friend in Bosnia, but to carpool to Poland for a short trip instead.  Carpooling with a guy who was going to drive from Berlin to Krakow no matter what was fine:  I was just cutting out a share of his emissions.

Last week, in planning my trip up to Copenhagen for COP-15, I wanted to undertake some more serious analysis of my travel options since there seemed to be no easy answer regarding the best way to get to COP.

Here’s the dilemma:

• I wanted to spend as little money as possible;
• I wanted to minimize my CO2 footprint, as always, with a little added fervor since I’m going to Copenhagen for just that reason; it would be rather self-contradictory to not consider the greenhouse gas emissions of my travel.

This of course mirrors pretty much all problems we have with transitioning away from our dirty energy economy: $$$ vs. Environment/Ethics.  I wish I could always go with the option that made me feel the best, but alas, I too live in a world limited by the money I possess. (Side note: hopefully someday in my lifetime, solar flying is real and affordable.)

From Berlin, Copenhagen is just about 300 miles away or so, depending on the route you take. My options for getting from Berlin to Copenhagen (and back) with initial time & cost estimates were

1. Carpooling, 6-8 hours, $60-100 (In Germany, you can search for “carpool opportunities” online and then pay the driver a fee to ride with him/her to your final or intermediate destination.)
2. Flying, 3 hours (incl. transport to airport & check-in time etc.), $80-100 (incl. checked bag fee)
3. Training – 7 hours, $200-350
4. Busing – 7.5 hours, $60-95
5. Hitchhiking – 8-10+ hours, $0
6. Biking – unfortunately I’m not that fit and couldn’t miss any more days of class before the 4th of December

To be honest, when I was preparing this post last week by beginning to calculate CO2 costs, I was hoping that the math would help me justify a cheap, fast plane trip, or at least fortify my commitment to not flying with some hard numbers.

Luckily, today I found a great deal on a train ticket, just $128.44 at today’s exchange rate. This saved me from dealing with the “fuzzy math” of trying to adding up the global warming potential of radiative forcing from NOx and vapor trails from flying or the full CO2e emissions of charter buses compared to personal cars. I’m quite pleased with this outcome; train travel is widely heralded as the best form of rapid transit when it comes to environmental and climate friendliness. I don’t have to feel bad about my rather unnecessary carbon emissions from flying 300 miles and I don’t have to feel bad about not having any money for food in the world’s third most expensive city. A win for cost-consciousness and environmental-consciousness! Not to mention train travel is far more comfortable than any other form of travel that I’m familiar with.

P.S. In my search for comparative GHG emissions data for the various forms of transport, I found this great website, www.ecopassenger.org.  (Unfortunately it is only really handy for trips within Europe at this time.) Here is the info they gave me regarding energy resource consumption and CO2, particulate matter, NOx, and non-methane hydrocarbon emissions.

The graphs above assume European average number of fill seats on European train and plane trips and two passengers in the car; if I up the number of passengers to three, the CO2 and Energy Consumption figures of car travel begin to be more comparable with train travel and become smaller than train travel at four or more passengers. 30 miles of ferry travel is not included in the car mileage, helping make this car trip a bit more competitive with train travel than on other routes.

Really big side note on additionality

The question here is, if I select one of these options, will the CO2 emissions from the other choices disappear? Or would my travel with those options not really be “additional” – that is, if I chose not to travel with any of the above choices, will those same CO2 emissions still exist?

Whether I fly, hitchhike, train, or bus, these people are going to be sending their vehicles off to Copenhagen no matter what and the CO2 of all options will almost certainly exist whether I’m there or not (carpool being the only possible exception). At first glance, I should not be too concerned with my CO2 impact. Sadly, it’s not so simple. I also have to consider if my choice to take (or not to take) one form of transport will increase or decrease future emissions. It’s all conjecture, but I think my decision probably has a larger impact on commercial firms (airlines, trains) than on someone who picks up a hitchhiker spontaneously. Actually, those who are driving regular carpools as a profit-seeking endeavor are likely the most affected by my decision. Since they are smaller operations, one rider makes a bigger difference; they might not make a trip at all if they don’t get a carpooler (me).

Still, you might not think that my one decision can really make a difference in cutting carbon emissions. If I don’t fly, the plane will still go to Copenhagen and still pollute approximately the same amount (very slightly less without the weight of my body and bags). When I excitedly told people yesterday about having purchased my train ticket at a price almost comparable with flying, several people asked my why I didn’t just fly, since it was still cheaper. Their reaction was based on a belief that my impact, the purchase of one seat on a train instead of one seat on a plane, wouldn’t really make a difference in the grand scheme of climate change. So why not fly and reduce the pro capita emissions? Well, I’d be giving my money (as little as it is, grr!) to the commercial airline, helping them continue to profit off of highly polluting practices. If we all say, “screw it, the plane is flying, so am I,” we find ourselves faced with a tragedy of the commons.

From the opposite perspective – the the bright side, collective action implies that if enough of us take our environmental ethics to heart and steer clear of short flights, we could perhaps reduce the demand enough to economically stimulate the airline to cut down from two Berlin-Copenhagen flights a day to just one. Such a 50% reduction in supply might raise the price of a flight to something more fitting with the amount of pollution it produces. This would likely further cut the demand as consumers look more towards other means of transport, this time out of cost-consciousness rather than environmental-consciousness. And that, dear friends, is why I chose not to fly to Copenhagen.