Friday, June 3, 2011

Mountain and Veld vs. Cloud and Carbon



These two landscapes are seen on the N1 route from Johannesburg to Cape Town - one of the main roads for the Intercape city to city bus service.

So many people opt for flying to their destination - trying to spend as little time as possible on their travel. What we are really missing out on is the act of the journey - the opportunity to see different landscapes speeding by as we travel by train or bus. The joy of reading a book, and chatting to the person next to you for hours on end, while you are taken closer and closer towards your destination.

We need to start slowing down, and try to enjoy the things we do - reducing your carbon footprint is not just about choosing different products and services which does less harm to the environment. It's about slowing down, doing less, enjoying more, simplifying and consuming less. Choosing to not always travel by air means making a commitment to contributing to less carbon emissions. Increasingly more planes are built and put into the air to answer a growing demand for people who would rather fly than travel by bus or train.

"Some 16,000 commercial aircrafts pump out 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. It is estimated that by 2020 airplanes will be the single biggest contributor to global warming. It is expected to be bigger than all the other sources of carbon emissions combined. Ground level emissions are less harmful than the carbon emissions by airplanes, for the simple reason that they are deposited directly into the atmosphere."

Ekta Mulchandani at:
www.4ecotips.com/eco/article_show.php?aid=671&id=287


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