Yelling at the Clouds

Yearly commute: 466 lbs of CO2
Round trip cross country flight: 592.2 kg CO2 (ICAO) = 1305.5 lbs CO2

Genesis of Thought 

I am a staunch hater of cars and car dependancy. Everyone who knows me knows that I think cars are awful from just about every perspective – environmental, social, financial – and there is a growing movement of people who think so too. Many are working to end car dependency in the US by changing the way cities in the US are laid out and promoting policies that bolster public transit and bike infrastructure. There is a long way to go before the dreams of a car-free US are achieved, but many of those people, including myself, have already made the leap to being car-free, infrastructure be damned. 

As a result of this change, I have had to do a lot of nonsense to make living in the Bay Area without a car feasible. For example, I have to commute about 40 miles one way from San Francisco to Palo Alto everyday. As a result of this, and to maintain my own mental sanity, I wake up at 5:30AM everyday, bike for ~20min to the station, ride the Caltrain for ~40min, and then bike ~30min from the station to work. I repeat this process in reverse, leaving work at 4:30PM. 90 minutes one way, instead of the 40 minutes it would take me to get there by car. But, it is worth it to me because I know it represents an idea much larger than myself – the idea that we can be free of our dependency on these mechanized monstrosities, and truly reach a sustainable way of living. In terms of raw numbers, I prevent the emission of 466 lbs of CO2 per year through this process (2020 Mazda MX-5 was my old vehicle). 

After working my job for a couple of years, it came time for me to take long vacation finally. I hadn’t really travelled outside of the country, with COVID rampaging through the world in 2020 and 2021, so I thought maybe now was a good time. Maybe I could finally see the famous bike infrastructure of Amsterdam, or hike through the Himalayas. Maybe I could wander through Mexico and get food poisoning again, or relive my favorite trip I had taken ever, when I went to Japan in 2018. 

Before booking any flights though, I went and quickly calculated my expected carbon emissions for the trip. I started with a flight to NYC from SFO, since I probably would want to go home before I traipse around the world. A round trip flight would run me 1305 lbs of CO2, more than double what I save through year of the ridiculous commute I do everyday. This gave me a moment of pause. Why should I bother cutting a vehicle out of my life, if I am okay going on this world trip and burn several times more CO2 in one month? 

For all my young adult-adult life, my friends and I have been marketed the idea that the only way to vacation is to fling yourself to some far off place and experience a new culture in a new environment. Airline advertisements enticed us to discover more of what was our there and influencers/social media made us lust for these experiences through photos and other content. It is true that vacationing from afar can be a life changing and meaningful experience. But many, including myself a month and a half ago, see that as the only way to have a vacation, and as a result miss another very meaningful, and environmentally sustainable, way to vacation – vacationing from home. 

So I vacationed from home in San Francisco for a whole month. It was the best month I ever had.