A Less Frequent World
October 13, 2009 – 8:43 pmI’ve been invited to give a talk at Michigan State University, and have a standing invitation to visit the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Twelve months ago, I would have booked a couple of flights and been done with it, but I’m trying to go a year without flying—when I calculated my carbon load in the spring, I discovered that it accounted for 85% of my impact. The best plan I’ve been able to come up with looks like this:
Frankly, it sucks. Toronto to Windsor by train, then Detroit to East Lansing by car (since my host is willing to come pick me up). From there to Madison is nine hours by bus, but with travel times like these I’m not likely to visit Chicago again any time soon, so I might as well stop for a day at Argonne National Laboratory, and if the timing works out (or if I make it work out) in Milwaukee for SIGCSE 2010. All told it would be eight nights away from family and almost 24 hours of actual travel time once you include the return trip, but what’s the alternative? I don’t have a lot of faith in carbon offset schemes, and big chunks of this itinerary simply can’t be done by train. I’m beginning to think that our future is going to be a slower and less frequent place than our present—that my generation may turn out to be the most widely traveled in both history past and history future.
No Responses to “A Less Frequent World”
Have you considered cutting across the lake? I’m not sure how early the lake opens, but I bet you could give someone like http://www.lake-express.com/ a call and they’d be happy to tell you. Did grad school in Madison: avoiding the loop around through Chicago is _so_ worth it.
By Ross Reedstrom on Oct 13, 2009
Until our continent embraces high-speed rail, travel is going to take a while unless it’s via air.
Take the train/bus/car on the way out and catch a flight back. You’re still combining two (or more) trips into one and traveling overland for half of it (or more, since not much flies out of Madison). That’s already a major reduction in carbon (and likely monetary) cost.
By Ben on Oct 14, 2009
Long train trips are valuable time. Perfect for some good brainstorming or heavy thinkwork. I’ve just written http://reinout.vanrees.org/weblog/2009/10/14/valuable-time-train.html as an example of why I think so
By Reinout van Rees on Oct 14, 2009
Greg,
What date are you giving a talk at MSU, and in which department? I’m guessing computer science, but can’t find your name on their calendar. I’d love to come to your talk (I’m also at MSU).
By Brian O'Shea on Oct 14, 2009
Car and train can use electricity and train is perfect for up to 3 hours travel, at least in here Europe because train stations are in town, closer than airports, and because it is faster to board into a train than a plane. For a trains with average speed of 220 mph, that would be good enough for a distance like NY to Chicago.
When you need to cross the sea and for longer journeys, you need to fly and current alternatives to kerosene are not suitable for planes (they froze to easily), but that might change.
By Damien on Oct 14, 2009
I very much welcome Greg’s initiative – I have made a similar plea to avoid flights when this would entail another one within two weeks or less, as is typical for conference travel (violated it twice in six years, though). I also agree with Reinout van Rees’ notion that train time may be valuable. When I used to commute, I even found those hours on the long-distance trains (which are equipped with tables and DC power sockets here in Germany) to be more productive than the average hour in the lab (apart from things that require special equipment, of course), since nowadays people do not talk very much on the train any more. As it happens, yesterday I booked my tickets to attend http://www.sciforum.hu/ the fourth time in a row by train (will be 13h one way this time, passing through Dresden, Prague, Bratislava and Vienna).
By Daniel Mietchen on Oct 15, 2009
Reminds me of the documentary film “Recipes for Disaster”: http://www.millenniumfilm.fi/tbr_recipes.html (interesting write-up: http://www.channel4.com/more4/documentaries/doc-feature.jsp?id=212)
I wonder a bit about these “carbon footprint” calculations. On the one hand, the airline business claims that they’re only responsible for something like 2% of carbon dioxide emissions, and lots of people say that agriculture is the biggest offender, so does the calculation break the numbers down in any detailed fashion?
By Paul Boddie on Oct 15, 2009
Consider Amtrak for Michigan->Chicago if you can get a ride south to it from Lansing, and Van Galder for Chicago->Madison. Amtrak has outlets (but no wifi) if you would benefit from using your laptop on the train. Van Galder is cheap and runs every few hours and I’ve had a great experience with it.
(There’s also Megabus which has wifi but not sure which legs would actually run at reasonable times, and I was going from Ann Arbor, not Lansing).
By Liz Blankenship on Oct 18, 2009
> I’m beginning to think that our future is going to be a slower and less frequent place than our present
Not altogether a bad thing. We will then be required to deal more frequently with those who live near us (and vice versa), with the result that we’ll be more aware of what effect we’re having on the world around us.
By Ben Finney on Oct 25, 2009