Decarbonizing my professional travel

As I’ve been researching the climate crisis and how it might engage higher education, I’ve also tried to change my personal life in response to global warming. I’ve taken up bicycling, have started eating a vegan diet, and more, but I’m stymied by a bigger challenge: how to decarbonize my professional travel.

In this post I’ll share what I’m thinking, in my usual spirit of transparency. I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

I used to travel a *lot*, before COVID struck in early 2020. I would hit the road up to six times a month, heading to points domestic and international. My usual conveyance to these destinations for giving speeches, running workshops, and consulting was aircraft. When we lived in Vermont I drove a lot, from New England to Pennsylvania and upstate New York, thanks to a paucity of transit options. Once COVID hit I turned almost completely to virtual work. Now that in-person requests are starting to pick up, I’d like to figure out how to do less flying, as planes are the most energetic emitters of greenhouse gases.

Why would I do this? As someone working in climate futures it’s simply ethical and non-hypocritical to practice what I preach. More, I can learn from practice.

So how should we travel?

The American ideal is to drive like mad, especially with big and/or expensive cars/trucks. Next up is taking a jet plane, which people who don’t actually fly somehow consider to be glamorous. Both are CO2 emitting monsters.