Winter Vacationing Responsibly

BY: ECOHOUSE

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

As finals creep in and the distressing news of the world continues to globalize and thus snowball onto our feeds, college students are one of the many groups who yearn to get away. Indeed, physical distance from these stressors might offer on the surface a coinciding psychological distance. Unfortunately, some of these problems do follow us wherever our travels take us: from a log cabin in the mountains, to the sunny beach on any number of coasts, to the grandparents’ midwestern home. Indeed, one of the most overarching issues from these is climate change, which is of course fed further by our travels in the form of carbon emissions and the eating out rendered necessary unless you get to pack your food. This is not true only of the notorious jet plane, but also of the passenger vehicle and a cruise ship. When even a short flight from Germany to the UK emits about 80 kilograms of carbon dioxide per passenger, a cruise ship emits three to four times this amount (not to mention that all cruise ships combined generate about 15 gallons of chemical waste every day), and the average passenger vehicle about 404 grams per mile, winter travels are no small contributor to the issue. This is intensified by the consideration that there were 4.1 billion air transport passengers, 3,212,347 miles driven by light duty vehicles, and 25.8 million global ocean cruise passengers in 2017. Reduction in snow cover is only one of the multitudes of consequences of the climate change largely caused by our carbon emissions. So, in order to keep the blanket of snow that often symbolizes the winter holidays we must find ways to reduce the carbon footprints that we leave in that snow all the way to our winter retreat of choice.

Reducing and eliminating unnecessary travel

This is perhaps the most obvious but the most potentially challenging and effective way of reducing carbon emissions from vacations. Before a family steps onto an airplane, cruise ship, or their SUV, they may consider their reasoning for traveling abroad—common reasons are to get away, to explore new communities and to spend quality family time together. Yet, these can be achieved at home and in your surrounding community. Getting away from stressors could simply require shutting the door to them by separating your work and academic lives and the outside world from personal and family life at least for the time of the vacation by limiting your access to social media and email and physically separating them by keeping those accesses and work materials (such as laptops and paperwork) out of areas of retreat such as bedrooms and living rooms. Additionally, families can uncover the hidden gems of their own community together, killing two birds with one stone by sharing the enjoyable activity and goal together while discovering that the learning experiences that were previously thought only obtainable abroad actually exist within your local area. (Try not to kill birds though, as that would not be environmentally friendly either.) However, to get together with extended family may require quite a bit of travel. To ensure this is addressed with environmental responsibility, families and individuals may try to carpool with nearby family as much as possible.

Carbon offsets

When travel is necessary, there are ways to mitigate its negative effects. One of the platforms to do so is the United Nations’ Carbon offset program, where you contribute towards carbon offset projects. Such projects may focus on agriculture, fossil fuel switching, reforestation, transport, waste handling and disposal, and many other areas which provide much potential for carbon offset. Carbon offsetting, as defined by the United Nations, is “a climate action that enables individuals and organizations to compensate for the emissions they cannot avoid, by supporting worthy projects that reduce emissions somewhere else.” As you contribute towards projects, your cart “items” are measured in metric tons

(one metric ton is equivalent to 1.1 US tons) of carbon that you will offset with your monetary contribution. If you would prefer to volunteer for mitigation, Habitat for Humanity does so by boosting homes’ energy efficiency and helping to rebuild homes destroyed by natural disasters resulting from climate change (and has recruited volunteers from Westminster College in the past!). This organization has a location as close as Jefferson City and more scattered throughout Missouri.