Travel – Page 27 – a sibilant intake of breath

Vancouver ticket booked

My flight is booked and I can now say with certainty that I will be in Vancouver from the 21st of December until the 2nd of January. Hopefully, that span will include a big gathering of friends in North Vancouver, akin to my pre-Oxford departure party. Saturday, December 29th is a plausible date for the event.

Already, nights in Ottawa are developing a chilly edge. By late December, I expect that it will be with the most concentrated of joy that I trade the icy windswept streets of Ontario for the rainy windswept streets of British Columbia.

PS. My planned trip to B.C. was mentioned before.

[Update: 23 October 2007] According to the NativeEnergy carbon calculator, my flights to and from Vancouver will collectively generate 1.761 tonnes of CO2. As with my thesis, I decided to offset the emissions through the capture of methane. While offsets are far from perfect, they are quite probably better than doing nothing.

I was surprised to see that travelling the same distance by train would produce 0.727 tonnes of CO2. While that is 60% lower, we generally think of trains as being really dramatically greener than flying. I suppose the difference is largely that nobody travels very long distances by train.

Holidays ahead

Though it feels like the Labour Day weekend just happened, I now find myself on the cusp of another three day break from work. The Thanksgiving weekend is shaping up to include a good combination of activities. Some cycling will doubtless occur. On Sunday, I am doing my first trip with the Ottawa Hostel Outdoor Club (mentioned before). About twenty people are going on an exploratory hike to Ramsay Lookout. That evening, I have been invited to Thanksgiving dinner by a co-worker. I will have to make some kind of interesting veggie dish. Any suggestions (or recipes) would be most welcome.

Next Thursday, Meaghan Beattie is arriving in Ottawa. The next day, Tristan is coming from Toronto. Spending the weekend exploring Ottawa with them promises to be excellent. We should, for instance, finally visit the Civilization Museum over in Gatineau. October 16th marks the three-month point in my job. Between the 24th and 28th, I will be in Montreal. The first three days are for a conference, whereas the weekend is reserved for having fun in the city. I really enjoyed living there for a couple of months, back in 2003. I am told the train ride from Ottawa to Montreal – through all that autumnal deciduous landscape – should be very beautiful.

December should be really exciting. By taking four days off work and using the various statutory holidays, I should be in Vancouver from late on the 21st until the 3rd of January. It will be my longest span of time in the city since the summer of 2006. A big gathering of friends in North Vancouver should definitely be arranged, akin to my pre-Oxford departure party and previous such food-and-friend-laden gatherings. I feel guilty about the flight (0.8 tonnes of CO2 for the total journey of 7100km), but I am regrettably unable to take two months off work to cycle there and back.

Hybrid-ed

I got my new bike today, and it is a thing of beauty. It seems to weigh about half as much as my Oxford hybrid and the components are dramatically sharper and more precise in their operation. I had them swap the grips for some with more traction, as well as replace the pedals with solid metal ones with cages. I have never ridden a bike with the latter before and have mixed feelings about them. With my feet in the cages, it is a bit awkward to stop at intersections. With the cages hanging loose under, they can scrape the ground on the inside of a turn.

In addition to the bike, lock, and helmet, I got a pair of 14L Arkel panniers. They aren’t the most attractive looking things, but the fabric they are made from seems extremely durable and the staff of the shop were very keen on the brand. At present, the left one has an awkward habit of sometimes brushing the back of my foot when my toes are inside the cage. I will need to adjust it somehow to avoid that.

I celebrated the acquisition of the bike and panniers through the purchase of about 35kg of dense foodstuffs: from yams to big tins of beans to salsa. Tomorrow, I am looking forward to Critical Mass. This weekend, I am looking for cycling further afield.

PS. I also want to express the degree to which I appreciated G.M Bertrand Cycles. Their staff was dramatically more helpful than those at any other place I visited. They gave me a good deal, fit the bike to me (with my pedaling on this odd stationary platform), promised a year’s maintenance, installed all the accessories I bought, did the grip and pedal switch for a pittance, and were otherwise exemplary.

Refraction and arctic solar canines

Both for work and my own interest, I am reading Richard Alley’s The Two Mile Time Machine, as recommended back in Oxford by Henry Shue. A relatively informal history of ice core science, it also includes some interesting facts and observations about the polar regions. For instance, I learned about the phenomenon of sun dogs or parhelions.

In the Arctic, ice crystals in cirrus and cirrostratus clouds sometimes produce a refractive effect, framing the sun with a pair of luminous partners. It gladdens me somewhat to know that the Arctic summer has at least one visual effect to compensate for the drowning out of the Northern Lights by constant sunlight. I once had the good fortune Aurora Borealis myself – from Neal’s balcony in the Gage Towers during a period of exceptional ionic activity in the upper atmosphere. Perhaps I will be lucky enough to see a sun dog before the Arctic changes beyond all recognition.

Electric buses and a turn-of-the-century villain

Back when new technologies were just beginning to threaten the horse in urban transportation, a scam unrelated to the underlying technology may have set back electric vehicles, relative to their internal combustion counterparts. So posits this article in The Economist’s Technology Quarterly, in any case.

Between 1907 and 1909, electric buses traversed the streets of London. The company that built them was eventually driven to bankrupcy by the machinations of Edward Lehwess: “a German lawyer and serial con-artist with a taste for fast cars and expensive champagne.” After destroying the ability of the company to raise capital, he bought eight of the twenty electric buses for £800, then sold them to Brighton for £3,500.

At the very least, this demonstrates the ability of non-technological factors to significantly affect the fate of new innovations. At the most, it makes one wonder whether a more sustainable form of public transport could have gained dominance over the last century, to the benefit of the climate and those breating urban air.

The trouble with jets

Air travel is one of the trickiest ethical issues, when it comes to climate change. In most situations, the difference between a high carbon option and a zero carbon alternative is essentially a matter of cost. If we are willing to spend enough, we can replace all fossil fuel power with renewables. We can get electricity, heat, ground transport, and energy for industry from sources that do not contribute to climate change. Air travel is different. Even for one million dollars a ticket, there is no way to get someone from New York to London in about eight hours that does not release greenhouse gases. Likewise, there is no feasible way to capture those gases for later storage.

Let’s consider a series of propositions:

Climatic science strongly suggests that allowing global greenhouse gas concentrations to rise beyond 500-550 ppm of carbon dioxide equivalent will have very adverse affects. These will be concentrated in the poorest states. It is highly likely that exceeding these limits will directly lead to large numbers of deaths, especially in the developing world. (See: these Stern notes)
At present, per-capita emissions in developed states are far higher than those in developing states. Canada’s emissions per-capita are about twenty times those in India.
Essential human activities, from heating to agriculture, produce greenhouse gasses.
People have equivalent moral claims to the basic requirements of survival.

If we accept these claims, we find ourselves in a tricky spot. To stabilize the level of a stock, you need to reach the point where inflows are equal to outflows. Even if we ignore how global warming is reducing the ability of the forests and seas to absorb carbon dioxide, it is clear that such stabilization requires deep cuts in total emissions. At the same time, taking the last two points seriously means acknowledging that developing states do have the right to comparable per-capita emissions. As such, the only option that is fair and capable of stabilizing overall concentrations requires very deep cuts in developed states.

Aside from being inextricably linked to fossil fuels, modern air travel compounds the harm done by the burning of that kerosene. This is partly because of where in the atmosphere it is deposited. It also seems likely that jet aircraft affect clouds in ways that increase their impact on climate change.

Imagining a world stabilized at 500 ppm, with reasonably similar per-capita emissions for all states, it seems quite impossible that there can be air travel at anything like contemporary levels. It is possible that some miracle technology will allow high-speed flights to occur without significant greenhouse gas consequences, but no such technology is even within the realm of imagination today.

As someone who has long aspired to travel the world, this is a very difficult conclusion to reach. It now seems possible that air travel bears some moral similarities to slavery. Before people become overly agitated about the comparison, allow me to explain. Just as slavery was once a critical component of some economies, air travel is essential to the present world economy. Of course, economic dependency does not equate to moral acceptability. If our use of air travel imperils future generations – and we are capable of anticipating that harm – then flying falls into the general moral category of intentional harm directed against the defenceless. After all, future generations are the very definition of helplessness, in comparison to us. We can worsen their prospects by fouling the air and turning the seas to acid, but they will never be able to retaliate in any way. (See: these Shue notes)

While I personally fervently hope that some solution will be found that can make continued air travel compatible with the ethical treatment of the planet, nature, and future generations, I must also acknowledge the possibility that people in fifty or one hundred years will look upon us as sharing some moral similarities with plantation owners in the United States, prior to the civil war.

Freight shipping and greenhouse gases

Travelling 100km by car produces about 10.8kg per person of carbon dioxide (assuming an average of 1.5 passengers per car). Doing the same by bus produces about 1.3kg, while taking a modern electric train produces about 1.5kg (based on the energy balance in the UK). What is remarkable is that shipping freight by truck produces 180 grams of CO2 per kilometre, while doing so by train produces just 15. Clearly, switching freight transport modes offers considerable scope for emission reductions (as does reducing the total amount of freight shipped).

When you factor in how much damage heavy trucks do to roads – as well as the expense and carbon emissions involved in rebuilding them – it seems pretty clear that disincentives to ship freight by road make sense. Yet another externality that road pricing and carbon taxes could help address.

Morocco photos, part five

By climbing the slippery canyon walls, you could get a good view of the middle section of the cascade.

I had to spent a very long and uncomfortable day traveling to see them, so readers should be willing to tolerate a large number of pictures of the falls.