The Climate Change Collective is an initiative where the blogging community unites behind a common goal. Today, I’m happy to continue the conversation by sharing the third post in the series. Jamie, from JamieAdStories, reminds us of the link between our transportation choices and climate change.
And now…I have the honour of sharing this month’s post from the Climate Change Collective.
Your transportation choices and climate change
When Jamie said he was writing about transportation and climate change, I was intrigued. It’s something that has been on my mind as pandemic travel restrictions have relaxed. Earlier this year, I wrote about ways to reduce the environmental impact of our travel choices. I also pondered whether the high price of gas would make North Americans rethink our driving habits.
I admit I’m a little bit in awe of Jamie, who no longer flies since considering the environmental impact of flying. When travelling in the U.K. and Europe, I’m always impressed how easy it is to travel from country to country by train. We took the Eurostar from London to Paris when we visited the U.K. in 2014, and I loved it.
Sadly, here in North America, our train service overall is abysmal. In most of Canada and many parts of the United States, we can attribute this to a large geographic area with a relatively small population. When travelling longer distances, there is a cross-over point at which flying is more environmentally friendly than driving or taking the train. Sadly, flying seems to be our default, even for shorter distances.
I’m always puzzled that many people are averse to taking public transportation on a day-to-day basis, but they will fly for vacations at the drop of a hat.
We need action from individuals, governments and corporations
So how do we solve this? Ultimately, it will require action by individuals, governments and corporations.
As individuals, we can reconsider the choices we make. As an example, for a work-related trip I’m taking later this week, I booked a direct flight from Toronto to Milwaukee. When the airline cancelled my flight, I decided to fly to Chicago and then travel to Milwaukee by bus, instead of booking a connecting flight. (For more travel tips, see Green travel tips to reduce your carbon footprint)
Governments can do more to invest in building and improving mass transit infrastructure. Then, they need to provide incentives for people to use it. A glaring gap is the Windsor to Quebec City corridor, where more than half of Canada’s population lives. Why don’t we have high speed train service on this route?
Finally, corporations can reduce the impact of business travel by:
- Continuing to embrace the virtual meetings that became the norm during the pandemic.
- Ensuring their travel policies support greener transportation choices. Many corporate travel policies require employees to take the cheapest flight option, even if it involves multiple flights. Also, it’s rare for companies to support train travel if flying is viewed as faster. I understand it’s not practical to spend two or three days on a train travelling across Canada when you can fly there in five hours. On the other hand, in the Windsor to Quebec City corridor, the train doesn’t take much longer and, with wifi on the train, you can work while you travel.
Please visit JamieAdStories and read Jamie’s full post. Then consider what you can do to reduce your impact.
Many people move from one city to the next and one country to the next as if it has no consequence. Flying around for meetings, for quick getaways or just for the sake of it, has become second nature for many of us. People are always looking for the fastest way to get from one distant place to another.
Jamie, JamieAdStories
Jamie’s Post: Travel with climate change
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About the Climate Change Collective
The Climate Change Collective was born out of an exchange that took place when I left a comment on a blog post by Jamie Ad Stories. Jamie and I both care deeply about the impact of human activity on our planet and wanted to find a way to keep the climate change message top of mind for everyone.
I put out a tweet to see what kind of interest there would be in a climate-change-related blogging collaboration…and the Climate Change Collective was born!
The members of the collective take turns writing a monthly blog post sharing their unique perspective about climate change. After the post is published, the rest of the group keeps the conversation going by sharing a link to the post on their blogs along with their thoughts and ideas.
If you’re a like-minded blogger and would like to join our collective, please get in touch. More voices joining the conversation means more attention to the problems plaguing our planet!
More Climate Change Collective posts
If you missed any of the other posts in the series, here they are:
- How climate change impacts your health…and your wallet
- Understanding how climate action redefines our future – Molly, Transatlantic Notes
- Travel with climate change – Jamie, JamieAdStories
- How climate change impacts animals – Caroline, Enviroline Blog
- How our need to shop is ruining our planet – A Sustainably Simple Life
- Residential solar panels: 2022 year in review– A Sustainably Simple Life
- How you can reduce your energy consumption and save money by saving the planet – Crisbie Coach
- 6 ways to reduce the environmental cost of experiences
- Returning to past habits – Smelly Socks And Garden Peas
- How green spaces help our planet A Sustainably Simple Life
- The benefits of active travel – Could it save you and the planet? – Midlife on Earth
- A Greener World – Debunking Myths About Climate Change – Molly, Transatlantic Notes
- Microforests – A tiny idea with big potential
- The impact climate change has on food security and how to help – Caroline, Enviroline Blog
- Reconnecting with nature and self by disconnecting from the world – A Sustainably Simple Life
- Wrapping Up Doesn’t Have to Be a Waste – Jamie, JamieAdStories
- It’s cold outside – The difference between weather and climate
- Our climate action does not need to be perfect – Molly, Transatlantic Notes
Let’s keep the conversation going
Please help keep climate action top of mind for everyone by sharing this post. Also, if you’re a blogger and you’d like to join the Climate Change Collective, please get in touch. The more voices we add to the conversation, the wider our message will spread.
As Jamie points out, we cannot simply resort to convenience when travelling. The choices we make every day matter.
What do you do to reduce the environmental impact of your transportation choices? Tell me your thoughts below.
I’ve only caught a plane three times in twenty plus years, so my impact is low there. I also never learnt to drive, preferring public transport, so I think I’m doing well there too
You are doing great! Keep it up.
I don’t drive (never learned how to) so public transportation was the norm for me when I lived in the UK (generally fairly decent in the places I lived/worked). Once I moved to the area of the U.S. I now live in was a whole different experience, haha. There are buses but to get somewhere you’d often have to get two or three and they don’t run regularly (some only once an hour) so what should be a 20 minute drive somewhere ends up being 2 hours on buses — madness! The vastness of North America makes cars and flying essential (sadly) but I hope more and more people are educating themselves about changes they can make. Great post!
Yes. It is definitely a different world here in North America. I think people who don’t live here don’t realize just how far we have to travel and how remote some areas of Canada and the U.S. are. When I visited England, someone asked me whereabouts I lived. I said I lived in the east, but about a 16 hour drive from the east coast. He then said, “so you’re on the west coast”. Uh no, it’s about a 50-hour drive from the west coast. He was baffled. LOL
I live in Brussels and I don’t use the car in the city. Public transportation is so efficient. For longer distance I take flights, only because it’s cheaper than trains. I would add to this interesting post, stop subsidizing airline companies (at least this is what they do here in Europe)
It would be wonderful to live somewhere that has good public transportation. That’s definitely not the case where I live. I can understand subsidizing airlines in a country like Canada where much of the population would be isolated without it because we have many remote communities. In more heavily-populated European countries where there are other options, it makes no sense at all.
When I started university, I had the option of buying a used car, but I chose to go with a bike instead. I love that it gets me where I need to go and helps reduce my carbon footprint. 🙂
That’s so wonderful to hear Jaya.
This might sound strange, but I’m actually one of those people averse to taking public transport on a daily basis. It’s just completely impractical where we live. I actually learned how to drive only about 6 years ago and it was because the bus trip to work was 1 1/2 hours each way (about a max 20 min drive). I really wish we had better systems in place that would encourage more people to take transit regularly. High speed trains between cities would be a dream. I would love to see the Vancouver-Seattle/Portland train be up and running soon even though it’s not a fast one.
I know exactly what you mean. It would take me about 90 minutes to get to work on transit. It’s a 15-25 minute drive depending on traffic. When our office was downtown, I could get there with one bus and a 10-minute walk. Now, it’s 3 buses away. That’s why I am happy to be working from home full time.