Travel – Page 25 – a sibilant intake of breath

Israel’s electric vehicles

Shai Agassi has a bold plan to transform personal transportation in Israel: electric cars built by Renault and Nissan using lithium-ion batteries from NEC. The crucial difference between this plan and those simply intended to encourage customers to buy individual electric vehicles is that Agassi’s company plans to provide battery infrastructure, in the form of recharging outlets and battery swap stations. Each battery is initially expected to provide 124 miles (200 km) per charge, with recharging happening both at parking-meter type stations and at centres where depleted batteries can be swapped immediately for charged ones. The batteries are expected to last 1,500 charges, or 150,000 miles (240,000 km).

The pricing model is also interesting. While it is still evolving, it will probably take the form of a monthly fee based on expected mileage. The company selling the battery exchange plans will subsidize the purchase of the cars, to some extent, increasing the rate at which people switch over from gasoline vehicles. The Israeli government has pledged $200 million to help get the scheme running. Given the incentives for clean vehicles that the government has promised to maintain until at least 2015, company officials suggest that their electric cars will cost half as much to buy and operate as gasoline ones would.

Israel does have unique characteristics that arguably make this approach especially suitable. Foremost among those may be its small size. One of Agassi’s batteries would be sufficient to drive across it from east to west, with two or three being required to go from north to south. That said, if this model proves successful, one could certainly imagine it working in other relatively confined high-density areas, from Manhattan to Shanghai.

Air travel and carbon capture

If carbon capture and storage technology does prove effective and economically viable, it might finally offer a decent answer to the problem of air travel emissions – at least for relatively affluent travelers willing to pay. The trouble with standard offsets is whether emitting X tonnes of carbon and then paying someone who would otherwise have emitted the same amount not to do so really represents equivalence.

CCS offers a more bulletproof answer: grow biomass, burn it in a power plant, bury the carbon dioxide in a saline aquifer or salt dome, and use the energy. Air travelers could pay to have X tonnes worth of carbon literally removed from the air by plants, and for that carbon to subsequently be stored indefinitely.

Other emitting activities – whatever their nature – could be similarly offset given sufficient infrastructure and funding.

The popularity of trains

According to the American Public Transit Association (APTA), ridership in 2007 was the highest for 50 years. Use rose 2.1% above 2006 levels and 32% above 1995 levels – a rate of increase twice that of the population as a whole. It also reflects a higher rate of increase than there was for vehicle miles travelled on highways.

The biggest gains were in rail ridership, with significantly lower increases in bus use, except in relatively small communities. This might reflect the transit choices made by planners, or the preference many people have for trains rather than buses.

Lots of statistics can be accessed through the APTA webpage. Some Canadian data is also available. Calgary and Edmonton both saw use of all kinds of transit increase by more than 10% between 2006 and 2007.

97-day West Antarctic expedition

Not content with data from satellites, a group of British researchers made the trek to the remote Pine Island Glacier in order to gauge whether climate change is accelerating its flow into the sea. The team is only the second group of humans to ever visit the area, following a brief visit by American scientists in 1961.

The Pine Island Glacier comprises about 10% of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet which, along with Greenland, represents the largest plausible contributor to sea level rise. The total melting of this one glacier would raise global sea levels by 25cm. The melting of the entire region of West Antarctica where it is located would contribute 1.5m.

Experiments performed included an examination of the ice structure using towed RADAR and the use of small explosions and geophones to identify soft sediments that might be lubricating the flow of the glacier. GPS receivers have been left behind to perform additional precise tracking. Their central conclusion is a significant acceleration of the glacial flow, compared with the 1% flow rate that satellite measurements tracked during the 1990s:

“The measurements from last season seem to show an incredible acceleration, a rate of up to 7%. That is far greater than the accelerations they were getting excited about in the 1990s.”

Since air temperatures in Antarctica have not risen significantly (as predicted by all General Circulation Models), it is plausible that the acceleration is the result of warmer sea currents.

Some component of the melting could be the result of geothermal activity. If so, it would continue to some extent even after global greenhouse gas concentrations were stabilized and their full consequences have been manifest through the climate system. Of course, the lower that concentration, the greater the chance that West Antarctica’s glaciers will be able to endure.

Westjet v. The Canadian

For those pondering lower carbon options for traversing Canada, Via Rail has a Toronto-Vancouver train called The Canadian that makes the trip in a little over three days each way. Unfortunately, the tickets are ridiculously expensive. Even in a shared sleeper car, it costs about $1,700 round trip, compared with $500 – $600 for a much faster journey with Westjet.

The round-trip flight generates about 1,700kg of carbon dioxide equivalent, while the train produces about 727kg. It seems a bit crazy to spend three times the money and twelve times the time in order to avoid emitting as much carbon as the average Canadian does in sixteen days.

Exploratory flowchart

This graphic summarizes the travel I have done since 2000, with blue arrowed lines for one way trips and black lines for return journeys. Lines with no mode of travel indicated are flights. The chart is not completely comprehensive (it excludes relatively minor trips) and it is somewhat simplified, but it gives a good overall sense.

I hope I am lucky enough to see a similar amount during the next eight years, in spite of air travel guilt.

SpaceShipTwo

Virgin Galactic – Richard Branson’s space company – has released the design of its next generation craft: SpaceShipTwo. The machine will carry passengers into the upper atmosphere after being carried to an altitude of about 15km by a larger mothership. After spending time at 110km of altitude, the vehicle will re-enter the atmosphere. While the technology is new and doubtless interesting, there is good reason to ask whether it serves any valuable purpose.

The three aims commonly described for the technology are delivering extremely urgent packages, launching small satellites, and entertaining rich people. While it can certainly be argued that manned spaceflight has not generally been a valuable undertaking, this sort of rollercoaster ride does seem like an especially trivial use of technology. For about $200,000, you get a few minutes in microgravity, the view out the windows, and bragging rights thereafter. Satellite launching could be a lot more useful, though the Virgin group has yet to demonstrate the capability of their vehicles to do so – a situation that applies equally to the idea of making 90 minute deliveries anywhere in the world.

The Economist provides an especially laughable justification for the whole undertaking, arguing:

When space becomes a democracy—or, at least, a plutocracy—the rich risk-takers who have seen the fragile Earth from above might form an influential cohort of environmental activists. Those cynics who look at SpaceShipTwo and think only of the greenhouse gases it is emitting may yet be in for a surprise.

Hopefully, they won’t become ‘environmental activists’ of the Richard Branson variety: investing in airplanes and gratuitous spacecraft while hoping someone will develop a machine that will somehow address the emissions generated.

Earth Flotilla

The 1997 and 1998 LIFEboat Flotillas were exceptional undertakings that I was privileged to participate in. Organized by Leadership Initiative for Earth, each centred around a week-long sailing experience in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia, intended to help make young people more aware of environmental issues and better connected with those similarly interested.

In March of this year, a smaller but similar expedition is taking place, organized by the World Wildlife Fund, in cooperation with some of the people involved in the original flotillas. Applicants must be residents of British Columbia between 13 and 17. They must be interested in environmental issues and willing to put in the time required.

As someone lucky enough to do something similar in the past, I recommend the opportunity wholeheartedly. If any readers of this blog match the description – or know people who do – application information is online.

[Update: 11 February 2008] I am pleased to report that Tristan’s brother will be participating in the Earth Flotilla, and because his family found out about it from this site, no less.

Carbon constrained travel

Pondering the era of post-air travel tourism, I have been thinking about places to visit by train. There are actually quite a lot of appealing prospects:

Halifax: see the Maritimes for the first time, and perhaps Caity Sackeroff as well
Boston: visit Iason, Sheena, Loretta, and perhaps Claire
New York: re-visit the city five years after my first foray
Bennington, Vermont: visit family

Have any readers undertaken the exploration of North America’s east coast using ground-based means? Are trains generally much more expensive than buses? How do they compare, in terms of speed?

The moral unacceptability of air travel has also left me thinking more seriously about the kind of grand backpacking tours that were more common when long-haul flights were ruinously expensive. The most ambitious possibility – flitting around at the edges of imagination – is to travel by ground all the way from London to Hong Kong, seeing as much as possible between the two. Emitting a couple of tonnes of carbon, in the form of flights across the Atlantic, would be a lot more ethically acceptable than undertaking multiple hops. Of course, a truly conscientous traveler would emulate a friend of a friend of mine and book passage across on a container ship.

Airborne and streaking eastward

I should now be in the air on my way back to Ottawa. Many thanks to all the people who helped to make my holiday in Vancouver so entertaining and personally meaningful. It has been a reminder of how important friends and family really are, and it has left me thinking with renewed energy about possible means of returning to British Columbia on a more permanent basis in the medium to long term.

For now, I need to get back on top of work projects and tardily finish my December book for the reading agreement with Emily.