One common question I've gotten about Green Postcards when the features cover destinations far from the U.S., is "But how much damage am I going to do flying all the way over there?" Good question. Let's say you fly from, say, Omaha, Nebraska, to Bangkok, Thailand, in order to make your way to this lovely villa. The damage would be 6,609 pounds of CO2 for one round trip flight, according to Terrapass. That's a lot of carbon -- a little more than you'd use if you drove a Prius around all year. So, soon, tomorrow even, maybe, we'll talk about how you can offset that carbon guilt.
But today, let's celebrate one step toward cleaner flying: Yesterday, Virgin Airways sent the first commercial jet run on biofuel up into the air. The passenger-less test flight of the Boeing 747 was run on 20 percent coconut and babassu oil fuel; supposedly, the fuel could reduce emissions by 50 percent. Now, for those quick eco-thinkers out there, yes, if we ran all our jets on coconut and babassu oil, we'd have to cut down a heck of a lot of trees. Sir Richard Branson, Virgin founder, is a step ahead of you. "On whether supply of the oil could be sustained, Sir Branson said he envisaged use of algae in the manufacture of the fuel in the near future and urged other players in the industry to embrace it," a Daily Nation article states.
Biofuels are controversial, of course. To create them, their source material must be grown, which takes land and produces emissions. Virgin promises they will be evaluating results from the flight to measure the fuel's efficiency and its effect on emissions. All that to say, keep watching for advances in flight technology that will one day, hopefully, maybe, let us fly guilt-free to wherever our hearts take us.
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2008 Sierra Club Wilderness Calendar
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