Eco-Travel: Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Low Impact Living is an environmental website and contributing writer for Earth 911. Become an Earth 911 contributor.

We Americans sure do love to travel! But as you likely know, in addition to being fun and rejuvenating, travel has many environmental impacts. There’s the fuel involved in getting to and from your destination, whether by car, rail, air or some other mode of transport (hurray to those of you on bikes!).

So before you take that last summer trip while gas prices are lower and the kids are out of school, we’ll help you understand more about the impacts of hitting the road (or air) and give you some good information and resources for how you can lessen your load and still enjoy a delightful vacation.

The Transportation Situation

First some stats. We travel almost 1 billion people days each year and that’s just for leisure travel. Over those billion days we rack up over 750 billion person miles per year – by plane, auto, train, bus and other forms of transportation.

All of this traveling equates to huge amounts of fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions. Our leisure travel by car alone accounts for over 9 billion gallons of fuel and 90 millions tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) each year.

Air travel tacks on another 140+ million tons of CO2. That’s a huge amount of CO2 emissions– taken together it represents more than the entire annual emissions of countries like Venezuela or the Netherlands.

To put this all in a personal context, if you drove round-trip from Los Angeles to Kansas City, you’d put out 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), whereas if you flew you’d be responsible for 2.2 tons. If you took a train, you’d contribute 0.9 tons.

For you international vagabonds, if you flew from Los Angeles to Paris, you’d have put out 4.4 tons of CO2 (and yes, we know you can’t drive that trip). For frame of reference, most people drive approximately 12,000 miles in the course of a year, which in an average MPG car emits almost 6 tons of CO2. That means by flying round-trip to Paris you’ve emitted almost the same amount of CO2 as you would by driving for a whole year.

So the green moral of the story is this: the most carbon-efficient transportation is to take a train or a bus. If you can’t, drive. Don’t have a hybrid for the trip?–Rent one! You’ll save money and gas and cut your emissions. EV Rental Car exclusively rents hybrids and natural gas vehicles and has many locations in the Western U.S.

One of the major US rental companies, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, is making big efforts to go green. In certain cities you can rent hybrids and alternative fuel vehicles. Enterprise has also recently launched a 50 Million Tree Pledge. It will plant one million trees per year for the next 50 years in U.S. National Forests.

Want to drive in super eco-style? You can rent biodiesel cars in some locations. One of our favorites – Bio-Beetle rents biodiesel VW bugs in Los Angeles and Maui. They are a must if you’re going to either of those destinations! Finally, if you absolutely cannot take a form of land-based public transport or drive a car, then take a plane.

And why not replace that international trip with one to see some of America’s majestic beauty? Have you been to Zion National Park in Utah? The Oregon Coast? The Florida Keys?

Amtrak even has a new GrandLuxe service starting this fall. Want to travel in old-fashioned high style? This one is for you. The GrandLuxe Train, which features dining, lounge and sleeping cars appointed with elegant vintage furnishings, will be occupied exclusively by GrandLuxe Limited passengers.

You can travel between Chicago and San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, Washington DC and Miami, and more. All Aboard! Find more about rail travel options here.