The Carbon Footprint of Joy
Grappling with the climate-warming impact of travel
As my partner Leslie and I travel around the country, we often find ourselves dodging the unavoidable fallout of civilization’s fossil-fuel addiction: heat waves, wildfires, torrential rainfall, all amplified in intensity and frequency by the relentlessly warming climate. We detour around infernos, turn back from flood-damaged road networks, mask up against smoke, head for high ground when the low ground grows unbearably hot.
And we ponder our own complicity in catastrophe.
Our Next Chapter adventure van has a 48-gallon diesel fuel tank and averages 15 miles per gallon in highway driving, which means we get about 700 miles out of those 48 gallons. According to a greenhouse-gas emissions calculator maintained by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, burning 48 gallons of diesel fuel generates 0.489 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. (A metric ton, also known as a tonne, is equal to about 2,200 pounds.) In the three years we have owned Next Chapter, we have traveled about 40,000 miles in it; according to the EPA’s formula that has pumped 28 metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
We spent 40-plus years of our lives working toward the privileged status we now enjoy, as retirees with the time and wherewithal to live the life of which we long dreamt, one that rewards our decades of hard work with freedom to explore and find joy in the beauty of our native landscape. Yet as we do so, we are shadowed by awareness that we are helping accelerate a destructive force that threatens the very existence of those places.
Our contribution is infinitesimal in the context of nearly 37 billion metric tons of global carbon emissions annually — and a cumulative 1.6 trillion metric tons since the onset of the industrial revolution in 1750 — but it is nevertheless uncomfortable to acknowledge. So I recently started investigating whether we could do something about the impact of our retirement project besides feeling guilty.
Mitigating the damage
One option for travelers concerned about the carbon footprint of their trips is to purchase offsets, a controversial but growing element of the global strategy to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It’s simple in concept: Compensate for the GHG contribution of one activity by funding a project that reduces the carbon emissions of some other activity, or pulls carbon out of the atmosphere. (Some airlines and other travel companies even offer that offset purchase as an ad-on in the ticket-buying process.) But in practice it is complicated.
A major reason for that, as a revealing story in the Oct. 23 issue of The New Yorker magazine makes clear, is that many carbon offset programs over-promise and under-deliver while others are straight-up frauds. Fortunately, the chaos and murkiness of the carbon-offset market has given rise to a coterie of third-party certifiers that can help consumers sift the good from the bad. Unfortunately, the certification sector itself contains both honest actors and enablers of deception.
To help sort things out, I turned to the Natural Resources Defense Council, an organization I found to be trustworthy in my years as a reporter covering environmental issues and policy. The NRDC has evaluated the work of carbon-offset certifiers and endorses several for truly doing what they claim to: correctly identifying and recommending programs that sell offsets to directly fund legitimate GHG emission-reduction efforts.
One NRDC-endorsed certification program is called Green-e Climate, and one of the projects that outfit has certified is offered by Green Mountain Energy Co. Founded in Vermont in 1997, Green Mountain is one of the oldest renewable energy retailers in the country, and in addition to generating climate-friendly electricity it now operates a carbon-offset program that charges $10 per metric ton and invests the proceeds in projects that capture methane emissions from landfills. I found that option appealing, given that methane is an even more potent heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide.
The projects funded by Green Mountain are not perfect. The captured methane is burned to generate electricity, which produces its own suite of emissions. But that generated power can offset demand that might otherwise be met by combustion of coal or virgin natural gas newly pumped from wells. Unlike those sources, landfill methane is considered a renewable resource, constantly being generated by anaerobic bacteria buried with our trash and organic waste. If it isn’t put to use, it simply escapes into the atmosphere.
If you don’t already know how many tons of carbon you want to offset, Green Mountain also offers flat-rate travel, commuter and household “lifestyle” packages intended to offset a year’s worth of emissions (based on average U.S. figures) for those activities. I did know how many tons I needed to offset, however, so I recently paid Green Mountain $280 to offset the climate impact of our first three years of diesel-fueled adventure.
I plan to continue doing so for as long as we and our van hold up to the rigors of the road. We’ll still be dodging climate-related calamities as we travel, and we’ll still be pushing carbon into the atmosphere with every mile, but at least we will have taken a small step to reduce our journey’s footprint.
The year in review
As 2023 draws to a close, it seems appropriate to look back on where we went this year and what we did.
States in which we camped: 10 (Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington)
Miles traveled: 14,000+
Days on the road: 90
Nights under a roof: 23
Nights in the van: 53
Nights in a tent: 4
National parks visited: 8 (Big Bend, Capitol Reef, Carlsbad Caverns, Crater Lake, Great Sand Dunes, Guadalupe Mountains, Olympic, White Sands.)
National monuments visited: 4 (Browns Canyon, Chiricahua, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Grand Staircase-Escalante.)
Rivers paddled: 2 (Owyhee, Ore., White Salmon, Wash.)
Favorite day hike: Lower Calf Creek Falls, Grand Staircase-Escalante.
Favorite developed camp site: Graves Creek Campground, Olympic.
Runner-up: Cherry Creek Campground, Gila National Forest, N.M.
Favorite boondocking site: Off Wolverine Road, Grand Staircase-Escalante.
Runner-up: Coyote Spring, Deschutes National Forest, Ore.
Favorite Hipcamp site: Jumpoff Joe Creek near Grants Pass, Ore.
Runner-up: Golden Rose Ranch, near Prewit, N.M.
Favorite travel souvenir: Vintage coal miner’s lunchpail from Walsenburg, Colo.
Least favorite souvenir: Matching cases of COVID-19 from Twain Harte, Calif.
With 2024 just two days way, I also want to thank all those of you who subscribe to this journal, with a special note of gratitude to those who left comments or sent emails over the past year in response to something you read here. It’s always rewarding for a writer to hear from readers that something resonated with, entertained, moved or awed them, and being able to forge that connection is among the most enjoyable aspects of this travel/memoir/nature-writing project. As Leslie and I pilot Next Chapter from one compelling landscape to another, it feels as if we have a community looking over our shoulders and encouraging us to keep going.
We will. Happy New Year!
Thanks for the important information and care you are taking for the environment! Happy trails!
Happy New Year John, and thanks for the suggestions on the carbon offset idea. Your stories are wonderful, can't wait to read about another year of adventures!