I became an academic in 2012, and along with the job came a healthy disposable income (I have no kids…)! Gone were my days of shared housing, eating cheaply at home, buses and only holidaying in the tent. I started travelling for work – India, China, California. I took holidays to North America, Europe, Australia! I spent new year in the Canaries. I discovered the joys of eating out regularly, furnishing my house, buying and doing stuff I wanted. I’d officially joined the middle class (or, rejoined if we count those few years in my teens after my dad got a promotion).

I don’t know what my carbon footprint was before I had money. I know for sure that it was a lot less than the 10-11 tonnes/year minimum that I calculated it was in 2017. A year that I flew to Gran Canaria for some winter sun, Madrid to visit family, China for iConference, and the US & Canada for a holiday with the Data Power conference tagged on the end! In flights alone, that little lot apparently was 5.82 tonnes of carbon – more than most people on this planet use in a year. As someone who has always cared about the environment and economic justice it didn’t sit well.

So, over the last few years I’ve been trying to live in better harmony with the world.

I started travelling by rail in Europe – work conferences became exciting voyages. I went to Barcelona taking in a night in Paris enroute. I travelled to Bremen and took the opportunity to spend a few hours in Amsterdam.

Covid-19 then brought the online conference – the demand to travel for work was curtailed due to travel restrictions, and we found other ways of connecting. As an organiser of the upcoming Data Power 2022 conference, I’m exicted – if daunted – by our experiment to run the physical conference in three locations (UK, Canada, Germany) as well as an online strand that is popular with those joining from Asia, Australia, South America. At some point, I’ll try and work out how much carbon we saved on flights.

Travel restrictions also brought our holidays closer to home – St Davids, London, South Downs. Now that we can leave the country again, my partner and I are planning to interrail across France and Spain this summer (twice postponed due to Covid). This will enable us to spend time in Madrid, Barcelona, Paris and London, rather than struggling through Manchester airport for a direct flight to Madrid. I was amazed to find out that the ~£300 return train journey should only use 0.02 tonnes of carbon, nothing in comparison to the 0.5 tonnes a return flight would be, and is also slightly cheaper than a return flight with baggage and transport to the airport.

Overall in the five years between 2017 and the last 12 months (May 2021 – April 2022), I’ve cut my carbon footprint from 10-11 tonnes/year to somewhere between 3.5 and 5.5 – depending on how much you believe in offsetting. These numbers only include things I have some control over – they don’t include the background resources used by our workplaces, healthcare, banking, pharmaceutical industry etc, and it comes with the obvious caveat that the detail of these things is hard to be precise about and open to dispute. The calculator I used is this one https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator

So, how did I go about that?

While there was some impact from food choices, renewable electricity and more sustainable products, the biggest impact for me was transport.

In particular, a significant reduction in flying. 5.82 tonnes in 2017 down to zero last year. I will fly again – I love to travel and I have friends and family in far flung places, and, in case you were wondering as I have, travelling by cruise ship is as bad as flying. My plan is to absolutely minimise flying by travelling by rail in Western Europe – and even further afield – where possible, taking advantage of remote attendance options for conferences, and being very aware of the impact of any flights I do plan to take.

I also moved to the city I work in. In 2017, I was commuting a 70 mile round trip by train an average of 3 days a week which comes to around 0.5 tonnes a year. I now travel to work on foot, bike or bus.

Other things have stayed fairly static, though. We have a petrol car that I still drive around 2500 miles a year for holidays and visiting people (0.4 tonnes/year). At some point we’ll probably replace this with an electric car (or some better alternative), but the carbon impact of sticking with this petrol one is less than the manufacturing of a new electric car. The government also needs to work out how to get convenient charging points for terraced houses!

So, as you can see the biggest and most obvious impact for me was flying! Rail travel is incredibly efficient in comparison, and it doesn’t have to be as expensive as you might think – although more certianly needs to be done by governments to make it the obvious cost-effective option for everyone.

If you are interested in making the switch and taking the slower, but cleaner, option next time you travel, I recommend checking out Seat61, Omio and Interrail.