Travel – Page 18 – a sibilant intake of breath

Heathrow’s third runway and the carbon price

I have commented before on the incoherence of how the United Kingdom plans to both cut greenhouse gas emissions and increase airport capacity. The December 8th report from the Committee on Climate Change perpetuates this mis-match, saying that the third runway for Heathrow could be compatible with government emission reduction targets, provided the price of carbon reaches £200 per tonne by 2050.

To me, this view is rather perplexing. Why build a runway, then use taxes to choke off the demand for it? Either your taxes won’t prevent the flights, making it harder to reach your carbon targets, or they will and your investment in the runway and supporting facilities will be a waste. The committee also assumes that aircraft engine efficiency will improve by 0.8-1.5% per year, that biofuels that don’t compete with food crops will emerge, and that high speed rail will displace a lot of short-haul flights in Europe. To take advantage of assumptions about the future to defend a dubious current policy is a practice all too common. Rather than pretending they can have it both ways, the UK should acknowledge that achieving its climate change goals will require reducing incredibly emissions-intensive activities like air travel.

Thankfully, the British Conservative Party – which is likely to take power with the next election – continues to oppose construction of the runway, precisely because it clashes with climate change objectives.

LC^3T: Over and done with

The bus journeys were often uncomfortable and grindingly boring, but my low-carbon expedition out west went wonderfully, all told. I spent some excellent time with my family during Christmas and at Yellow Point Lodge; I saw a heap of long-neglected friends during the span of a frantic night’s partying; and I got to devote a solid block of time to catching up with Emily.

It will probably take me a while to adjust to the cold (and to normal working hours), though I will be aided in the former by an excellent woolen coat my brother Mica gave me. While the return journey involved the loss of a treasured green Pilot G2 pen, the whole expedition can only really be counted as an incredible success. My thanks again to everyone who contributed to that.

LC^3T: Thunder Bay

We are now departing from Thunder Bay – leaving me about 22 hours from Ottawa. While the journey west felt a bit like a measured and disciplined march towards an objective, the ride east has the feeling of a disorderly retreat. That said, I have read and eaten significantly more while heading in this direction.

Ottawa will probably be a shock after Vancouver, but I am looking forward to being able to sleep horizontally and eat something moderately healthy.

LC^3T: Swift Current

I am now 24 hours into the return journey, heading for Winnipeg. There will be no significant stopover there this time, so it is just another stop.

From a carbon perspective, it has been good to see that the bus is still operating close to capacity, well after the end of the peak holiday period. All the ones I have been on have been more than 2/3 full during the long intercity segments.

LC^3T: Vancouver to Calgary

The return journey feels a bit like repaying student loans – the cost that comes after the benefit, and which is paid with the excitement and enjoyment behind. That said, perhaps I learned something from the trip out, and the return trip will be less straining.

Ottawa does include things to look forward to: friends and a new job, particularly.

LC^3T: Part II strategy

I learned a few things taking the bus from Ottawa to Vancouver. Firstly, dealing with stopovers and bus changes is probably the most annoying part of the whole experience. It is wise to carry as little carry-on baggage as possible. Indeed, a few Greyhound coaches have such small overhead compartments, they leave you with no choice but to stack bags around your legs. Given that my bag of photo gear simply must ride on top, that means absolutely minimizing all other baggage.

Secondly, bringing changes of clothes is pointless. There isn’t much refreshment to be had from putting clean clothes onto a dirty body, and the Greyound human logistics chain doesn’t offer anywhere you would want to change. Between dirty bus station bathrooms and lurching bus toilets, I will just endure for three days in my woolen longjohns and cargo trousers.

Thirdly, the bus experience is not really compatible with reading, at least for me. I read more in the first two hours than during the rest of the trip. As such, I am cutting back in-bus reading material to one small book and a magazine, and probably even that is more than required.

Fourthly, I found bringing food to be more trouble than it is worth. You don’t need to eat much, since you aren’t moving and don’t need to heat yourself much (the buses are warm). Subsisting off Gatorade and truck stop food may not be glamorous, but it is probably the best approach.

Fifthly, music is critical. If you have an iPod, get a device that lets it run on AAA batteries. Then, bring at least 12 with you per journey. Those available on the route are absurdly overpriced, and often of very poor quality.

Sixthly, at least in the winter, don’t expect the journey to be scenic. During my spans of non-darkness, all I saw was endless snowy boreal forest one day and endless prairies the next. If possible, schedule your trip so it is daylight when you cross the Rockies. If you really care about scenery (and don’t mind the higher carbon emissions), consider taking the train.

On this journey, I won’t have the stopover in Winnipeg that offered a welcome chance to see my cousin and have a shower on the way out. It will basically be one long, often-interrupted run from Vancouver to Calgary to Regina to Winnipeg to Ottawa. Please wish me luck.

Goodbye to Vancouver, again

My eighteen days in Vancouver were full of wonderful times with family, friends, and Emily. It was certainly worth spending the time on the bus for. As stated before, Vancouver puts Ottawa to shame as a city. It has so much more happening, not just because of the Olympics but because of the size, the location, and the fact that it is a city that has to pull for itself, whereas Ottawa exists to try to organize all the rest. Vancouver is certainly not without problems, but the degree to which it is alive and interesting more than makes up for it in my mind. I will be leaving the city with a lengthy list of appealing activities and places left undone and unvisited, for lack of time.

Given the need to mitigate climate change, I don’t know how often I will be able to visit Vancouver, going forward. While effecting political change is far more important than minimizing our personal emissions, doing the latter does seem necessary for retaining credibility while trying to do the former. That said, it certainly rankles a bit to see people flying halfway across the world for a sunny weekend, while you agonize about whether and how to go see your home city for the first time in two years. An ironic consequence of trying to behave ethically in relation to future generations is that other people raise their expectations of you, without necessarily adopting higher ones for themselves.

My thanks to everyone who helped to make this visit so special and worthwhile. This visit will certainly be a significant data point, while I am trying to solve the puzzle of where and how to spend the next few decades.

Vancouver update, and travel options

The last few days of Vancouver downtime have been really enjoyable. It is impossible to disentangle the extent to which the enjoyment is the product of broader and deeper networks of friends here, and the extent to which it arises from characteristics essential to the city.

Tristan is on his way back to Ontario via train. While it seems to be a significantly more carbon-intensive way to travel, it is undeniably infinitely more interesting looking than the bus. He has already provided good photographic evidence of that. In my experience, the bus trip offers virtually nothing worth photographing during short winter days. Perhaps one day we will have low-carbon trains, and thus a way of going cross-country that is both environmentally responsible and tolerably pleasant and interesting.

I have been reading an excellent book and play: Tom Stoppard’s wonderful Arcadia (combining amusing talk of sex and science) and Bill Streever’s Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places. The latter offers an astonishing contrast between stories of success and failure in extreme cold: caterpillars that freeze every winter and take ten years to achieve metamorphosis, versus the final journal entries of doomed expeditions, documenting how the men died one at a time.

Less than four more days, and I will be back on the bus.

Ah, Vancouver

The degree to which Vancouver is preferable to Ottawa can hardly be overstated. This ocean city is beautiful, green, and almost infinitely more dynamic than the snowbound bureaucracy out east. Whereas it is a challenge to find anywhere novel to go in Ottawa, Vancouver has a multitude of interesting areas, with the bonus that you don’t need to shiver in your long underwear while waiting for a bus to take you there, even in late December.

It was well worth enduring the bus journey for. It’s a shame there isn’t much here, in the way of environmental policy jobs.

LC^3T: Part I concluded

The video above should demonstrate why I normally leave the videography to my far more talented brother Mica. Still, I hope it will convey some sense of what it was like to cross Canada by Greyhound Bus, a few days before Christmas in 2009.

I hope everyone enjoys the holidays.

[Update: 13 January 2010] A video from the second half of the trip is now online.