The future of yoga travel

Taking the train and flight shame
One approach is to take alternative transport, a train, coach or even cycling.

Taking the train is generally cleaner than flying. This makes sense within the UK or around Europe, but doesn’t get you very far if you are planning a break in the Maldives, or are visiting relatives in New Zealand.

Many small island states, such as the Maldives, Seychelles and those in the Caribbean, are heavily dependent upon tourism revenue, so simply taking them off your holiday bucket list, might solve one problem, but creates another.

Clearly, some destinations need international flights. The question is how to reduce their environmental impact.

Making flights cleaner
This is something that the industry has been working on for a number of years, with a reduction in CO2 emissions per kilometre of just over 50% since 1990. Current airplanes are much cleaner than those of a few decades ago – one reason why upgrading of fleets is so important. But they still are not clean. ]Last year Airbus announced plans for the first hydrogen plane. However, these will not take off until 2035 at the earliest, and even then, only on flights up to 2,000 miles. There has also been a lot of research into sustainable aviation fuels which can be made from industrial waste, however these are more expensive than conventional aviation fuels.

Currently, despite this progress, there is no easy technological fix to the problem.

Offsetting your carbon footprint
While decisions such as the imposition of carbon taxes on aviation fuel in order to create a level playing field are ones that have to be made at governmental and intergovernmental levels, there is something that we can all do when booking our next flight – offset.

There is much debate about the relative value of offsetting the carbon footprint of your flight, or holiday. Some accuse it of being a greenwash. But, if the reality is that reducing the ‘real’ carbon emissions of our travel is some way off, the next best thing is to reduce the ‘net’ carbon emissions through offsetting.

Of course, there are offsets and offsets.

Under some schemes you might find yourself paying for a tree that someone else has paid for before you. It is far better for your offsets to contribute to a rewilding project that supports the biodiversity of an area rather than to planting trees that might then be cut down after a number of years as part of a forestry project.

If all this sounds too confusing, then the good thing is there is a Gold Standard (goldstandard.org) for carbon offsets. Alternatively, you could also choose to offset your travel with Trees4Travel (trees4travel.com), which carefully selects which organisations it works with, and charges you £3 per tree as your carbon offset contribution. For instance, if you were to take the train from London to Paris and spend three nights there, you can offset your travel for the cost of one tree, or £3.

Similarly Tomorrow’s Air (tomorrowsair.com) has partnered with leading carbon capture company Climeworks (climeworks.com), which is also part of the consortium behind the hydrogen-based aviation fuel plan mentioned above, to allow individuals to make a monthly subscription from as low as $10 to help fund carbon capture.