Traveling near and far can help us appreciate our beautiful world, but as most of us are aware, it also comes with significant costs to our environment. Air travel is extremely carbon-intensive and accounts for roughly 2.5% of global emissions. With increased passenger awareness of the environmental costs, carbon offset programs have been appearing everywhere, from signage in the airport to an opt-in box when buying your ticket. These offsets are billed as a way for travelers to negate the impact of their flight, but how do these offsets really work?
Carbon offset programs usually request a donation towards a carbon sink project such as planting trees, which sequester emissions. However, the specific projects and calculators used are largely unregulated across the 211 million-dollar offset market. While carbon sequestration and decreasing emissions are important, the validity of projects managed by multinational corporations is hard to discern. For example, tree planting projects, if done without significant ecological study, can damage natural biodiversity and emissions reduction programs are nearly impossible to track on a global scale. Even when programs are executed perfectly, the name “offset” is misleading. The benefits provided are not necessarily proportional to the emissions of flying and they don’t take away the impact of the emissions that have been released into the atmosphere.
Eagle County Airport
Although traditional offset programs can be questionable, this doesn't mean you can’t do anything to improve the sustainability of flying. There are strategies such as using the Google Flights CO2 numbers when picking your flights and choosing airlines that have stronger commitments to sustainability. You can even utilize the offset model by reframing to focus on an impact “offset” rather than an emissions “offset”. An impact offset could simply be a commitment to do something that makes a positive environmental impact every time you fly. Just keep in mind that this commitment does not take away any emissions from the atmosphere, but you can try to make your net personal impact positive.
An impact “offset”can look like financially contributing to similar types of projects as a traditional offset program, but focusing on local and verified efforts. The impacts of carbon sequestration in natural landscapes should not be underestimated. For example, a recent study on Eagle County found that by preserving forested lands (i.e., not harvesting, developing, or disturbing forests), over 400,000 metric tons of C02 was sequestered between 2019 and 2021. Healthy forests already exist in our community, and protecting them is crucial. Here in Eagle County, the Climate Action Collaborative is leading local greenhouse gas reduction efforts by helping to install electric vehicle infrastructure, implementing waste reduction programs, and assisting local governments with adopting net-zero building codes for new construction. These efforts are transparent and progress is tracked with tangible benefits for our community.
You can support these local efforts by volunteering with a local environmental organization or committing to a sustainable change in your own life. Another option that you can take advantage of locally is The Good Traveler program. The Good Traveler program is an “offset” option that, through partnership with the Eagle County Regional Airport, allows you to donate to local carbon reduction projects led by the Climate Action Collaborative and Walking Mountains in proportion to the emissions of your travel. This donation will support the efforts mentioned above, which unlike other programs, are transparent, tracked, and local.
Overall, offsetting travel emissions is a bit of a misnomer and many programs can have mixed results, but this does not mean that you can’t have a positive impact on the environment while you travel.
Elizabeth Baer is the Sustainability Fellow at Walking Mountains.
Photos courtesy of Eagle County airport.
