Travel companies tackle global warming

Rob Lovitt Travel writer • E-mail

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I think I’m carbon positive.

I’ve been calculating my “carbon footprint” lately — i.e., the quantity of CO2 emissions my activities produce — and it’s not a pretty picture. Factor in the greenhouse gases produced during some recent travels and it’s clear that I could stand to shed a few tons.

But how? Do a Web search on “carbon neutral” these days and you’re likely to get slightly fewer hits than if you typed in “Paula Abdul bizarre behavior.” Follow the links to “carbon-neutral travel,” and you may see your upcoming travel plans in a whole new light.

Getting to zero
The idea is simple (although potentially tricky): If you can’t eliminate the global-warming emissions produced by driving or flying, offset them by supporting (i.e., donating to) projects that eliminate them elsewhere. If those projects reduce emissions in an amount equivalent to what you produced along the way, the net effect is carbon-neutral travel.

Unfortunately, that’s also where it can get tricky. There are dozens of companies and non-profit groups that will help you tally your travel-related emissions, but they use different formulas to calculate both the emissions and the cost of offsetting them. (Generally speaking, most charge $5–$25 per ton of emissions.) And there’s even less consensus on the value of the projects they support. Ask two offset-providers whether it’s more effective to fund wind farms or reforestation efforts, and you’re liable to get three answers.

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So, what’s a carbon-conscious traveler to do? First, poke around the Web sites of several offset-providers to see how they’d calculate CO2 emissions from your proposed travels. (Most let you plug in flight distances and driving mileages, among other things.) Then dig a little deeper to see what offset projects they support. Do that on a few different sites, and you’ll have a much better sense of your options.

You can, of course, donate on any carbon-offset site, but an increasing number of travel providers are allowing travelers to make their trips carbon-neutral as part of the booking process. Here are three such companies and how they’re addressing the issue:

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