With airline ticket prices hiccuping ever more upward, and your car’s fuel economy being of much greater interest than it was five years ago, this last holiday weekend in the US saw a lot of people sticking closer to home.

That didn’t stop them from setting off bazzillions of dollars worth of fireworks right on their front steps, just to commemorate getting rid of those darn Brits and permanently screwing up the English language.

Now, I like the bright lights and bangs just as much as the next person. But, being an earth-lover from when I was wee-high, I just can’t justify the short-term pleasure fireworks give compared to their lasting environmental impact. Marc J. Sahara had some stark facts for us on LAist: “Heavy metals and salts [that] cause the many colors include barium, aluminum, lead, mercury salts, antimony, magnesium, etc., which pollute our air and our lungs.” Among other nastinesses, from the manufacture to the shooting squeals. Makes me wish Gandalf were around to make his celebrated fireworks out of pure magic instead.

But it got me thinking about carbon footprints and travel. In the travel writing and traveling world we talk a lot about environmental awareness. Maybe it’s that travelers are just generally more conscious people, people concerned about the world they inhabit and love to explore.

Particular questions concern the practice of flying itself, which spews tons of global-warming pollutants into the air, uses up loads of natural resources, produces mountains of trash, … all so I can immerse myself once again in Russia or discover Belize. All of which has spawned umpteen travel articles and blogs about salving your conscience by buying into carbon offset schemes every time you fly.

I’m afraid that carbon offsets always smack a little bit of the rich Westerner’s easy answer. Instead of changing our lifestyles, we just pay more money. Simple. And stupid. And undemocratic. Start there and what environmental damage can’t a rich person indulge in?

Okay, I do know that carbon offset schemes do a lot of good in the world and are supposedly helping fight all our willy-nilly environmental damage. But I just don’t think that’s good enough. Saving the planet is going to take more hard work — conscious work — than that.

I’ve got a better idea. Instead of searching frantically for carbon offsets every time you hop a plane, why not make your own offsets at home? Face it, if you read this blog, you like to travel and you’re not going to stop anytime soon. Neither am I. But I think it’s a good idea to take responsibility for the health and well-being of your own backyard. From little personal habits to major legislative change, you can do more than pay to plant a tree somewhere else. Like …

–stop using plastic grocery bags. Always bring your own canvas bags.
–stop using plastic water bottles. Don’t buy water unless absolutely necessary. The amount of fuel that goes into producing those bottles and shipping the water is staggering.
–if you have to drive for errands, try to run them in swoops once or twice a week, instead of daily.
–get involved with your town planning board to push for changes in approved housing and business building design. Most places aren’t built to use less energy, but simple changes in design, placement (like being tucked into hillsides), and materials can make a huge difference in heating and cooling.
–get involved with local river clean-ups, or efforts to stop coal companies grinding down mountains and fouling streams and lakes.
–support local organic farms if you’ve got them.
–change your buying habits. Pass on unneeded products that were transported from far away or produced in an anti-environmental and anti-humanitarian fashion.
–if you’re lucky enough to live in a Bobo Heaven town (like Portland, Oregon, or Missoula, Montana) where you feel everything environmental is already being done faster than you can think of it, look for other differences you can make in the community. Volunteer at the Humane Society. Ask your school nurse if they need supplies such as bandages, or even protein bars for underfed schoolchildren (this is a huge problem in many areas).
–and, oh, yeah, don’t use fireworks.

There are millions of other ideas out there, including some great eco-tourism pointers from this Green Travel article. All I’m saying is, the planet doesn’t just need you when you want to make up for hopping a plane. It needs you on holidays, holy days, high days, and pretty much every day of the week.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 6:02 am and is filed under Antonia projects, green travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.