To be annoyed that Green travel is so VERY expensive?

[toconclude]

Trying to avoid flying to Spain but the price of a car ferry is FOUR times the cost of return flights for two - plus the cost of petrol each way. It's just not economic if you want to visit more than one place. Grr.

@SantaClawsServiette

Not always, but in a lot of cases the "green" way to travel is green because you are actually paying for the real costs of what you are doing. Air travel is often undertaxed and subsidized in a way things like ferries and trains aren't, and travelers don't pay the costs related to their emissions, those are just passed on.

If we paid real costs a lot of people would not be able to afford the number of overseas holidays we take.

This. Like with anything else in life, you have to choose between what's cheap, and what's right. Buying ethical clothing costs much more than Primark; organic grass-fed meat costs much more than something from an American feed lot.

Just fly and plant a few trees
Don't fall for this sort of greenwashing. You can't plant your way out of cleaning up you emissions.

Visiting foreign countries is historically not normal.

I seriously doubt if going by car/ferry as actually any better for the environment.

Either accept you are damaging the environment and fly.

Or stay in the UK.

The car ferry is not even greener than a flight.

I mean, to be fair, there is probably art and architecture in Cornwall too

Unfortunately, shit though it is, overseas travel isn't possible if you want to prioritise your environmental impact and don't have a hell of a lot of money. YANBU to be annoyed about that though.

It way cheaper for us to drive to London that to travel on the train. In fact its cheaper for dh to drive to work every day than use the train as well.

@user1497207191

Surely a flight is greener than driving a car all that way and a diesel powered channel ferry?

I was also thinking that ferries are not exactly green. They have less of an impact on the climate but they cause a lot of pollution.

I would also say fly and plant some trees. What about flying one way and coming back on a ferry or train? I've done that a couple of times to Germany and Scotland.

You can't plant your way out of cleaning up you emissions

well it takes about ten years for a tree to start absorbing carbon but it's still a good thing to plant trees

@Comefromaway

It way cheaper for us to drive to London that to travel on the train. In fact its cheaper for dh to drive to work every day than use the train as well.

If people can afford to drive to London the congestion charge is still too low. There should be no need for private cars in central London at all, unless you have mobility problems.

I didn't say I was driving into central London. Dd lives in Ealing, we live in Staffordshire. Petrol is approx £50. The train is £80 on the slow train and about £160 on the fast train.

Go on a plane, but go further afield. Majority of weight on transatlantic flights is cargo, not passengers. It’s going anyway. You’re essentially hitching a life on a load of frozen salmon

This is garbage, airlines make less than 10% of their revenue from cargo, and a typical widebody might have at most a quarter of its load available to belly freight, and it's very specific to routes - and tends to be dominated in one direction.

It’s shit. But there’s no way round it. The system needs to change.
I’d go on weekends around the U.K. now but I wouldn’t go on a full holiday, it’s really not the same. I want warmth and different cultures.

And £15 congestion charge is nothing compared to the saving if four of you are travelling on a train.

@toconclude Why don't you Carbon Offset your flights? you could also change your pension to an ethical sustainable fund, so its not investing in fossil fuels.

I think its great your thinking of the planet, even if governments around thr world aren't.

@tttigress

Visiting foreign countries is historically not normal.

I seriously doubt if going by car/ferry as actually any better for the environment.

Either accept you are damaging the environment and fly.

Or stay in the UK.

It is normal. People have always travelled. Admittedly not by plane but there has always been movement.

The 10 days flexi Interrail Global Pass works out at 36.10/day each. For unlimited travel in Europe. That doesn't seem an unreasonable price to me. The 15 day consecutive Global pass works out at £26.60/day if you were travelling every day

Alternatively the 8 days (within a month) one-country pass is £31.63/day each.

So if you had the 10 day flexi pass, you could get from London to Paris for €30 (any journey from your hometown to London is also covered by the pass as long as it is the same day), Paris to Barcelona for €10. Nothing extortionate there.

Trouble with Spain is that many trains will require the €10 supplement too.

@JuergenSchwarzwald

You can't plant your way out of cleaning up you emissions

well it takes about ten years for a tree to start absorbing carbon but it's still a good thing to plant trees

I'm not saying that planting trees isn't a good thing. The idea though that people can "offset" their emissions in this way and walk away guilt-free is a complete con though.

@Comefromaway

I didn't say I was driving into central London. Dd lives in Ealing, we live in Staffordshire. Petrol is approx £50. The train is £80 on the slow train and about £160 on the fast train.

There's more to running a car than mere petrol though. Granted, most of them are fixed costs which you'd be paying anyway, but it's only fair if you are doing comparisons to include a share of the insurance/tax/maintenance costs.

[quote Alexandra2001]@toconclude Why don't you Carbon Offset your flights? you could also change your pension to an ethical sustainable fund, so its not investing in fossil fuels.

I think its great your thinking of the planet, even if governments around thr world aren't.[/quote]
Because carbon-offsetting flights is just greenwashing.
www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/golden-age-of-greenwash/

YABVU. Your choices are do it cleanly (expensive), do it cheaply (polluting) or do something else that's cheap and clean.

These are the sort of compromises people have to make if they actually care about the environment. Being "green" is more expensive. If you want to go to Spain, you don't really care about being "green" because however you go about it it will cause more pollution than not going would.

If we want a clean world, global travel will have to become a once/never-in-a-lifetime event. You can't have your cake and eat it (eat your cake and still have it would be a better phrase).

I might want to reduce my gas consumption but my choices are pay a fortune for electric heating or go cold. So I compromise, using the gas less.

@tttigress

Visiting foreign countries is historically not normal.

I seriously doubt if going by car/ferry as actually any better for the environment.

Either accept you are damaging the environment and fly.

Or stay in the UK.

It very much is historically normal. Romans holidayed abroad (admittedly often for considerably longer than we do now). Obviously they didn't fly, but suggesting that travelling for pleasure is a modern invention is quite incorrect.

Giving up flying is not an option for me if I want to visit my family. It’s two days travel each way by train or coach. If I fly and get picked up from the airport, I can be there in half a day. My parents would never manage a 2 day journey.

The country I live in is great for local holidays and easy green travel to neighbouring countries but I’m not spending half my holiday time on a bloody train, especially not in the UK where it is dirty, expensive and unreliable.

@MorningStarling

YABVU. Your choices are do it cleanly (expensive), do it cheaply (polluting) or do something else that's cheap and clean.

These are the sort of compromises people have to make if they actually care about the environment. Being "green" is more expensive. If you want to go to Spain, you don't really care about being "green" because however you go about it it will cause more pollution than not going would.

If we want a clean world, global travel will have to become a once/never-in-a-lifetime event. You can't have your cake and eat it (eat your cake and still have it would be a better phrase).

I might want to reduce my gas consumption but my choices are pay a fortune for electric heating or go cold. So I compromise, using the gas less.

But going by road/ferry will be just as polluting as by air, so it's not really a choice of clean or cheap as there really isn't a "clean" option of travelling long distances, unless by bike!

@ChaToilLeam

Giving up flying is not an option for me if I want to visit my family. It’s two days travel each way by train or coach. If I fly and get picked up from the airport, I can be there in half a day. My parents would never manage a 2 day journey.

The country I live in is great for local holidays and easy green travel to neighbouring countries but I’m not spending half my holiday time on a bloody train, especially not in the UK where it is dirty, expensive and unreliable.

Not to mention trains are also heavily polluting, especially in the UK due to not being fully electrified, so huge amounts of travel miles are powered by diesel, even long distances "under the wires" when there isn't electrification at one end or the other of the journey.

It is normal. People have always travelled. Admittedly not by plane but there has always been movement.

@itwasntaparty people haven't always travelled. Before the industrial revolution, overseas leisure travel was the preserve of the most wealthy - if you weren't the son of a nobleman, you could forget any dreams of a Grand Tour. The middle classes may have had some movement within the country but for the masses the only travelling you ever did was on market day. If you wanted to see the world, your best bet was to join the army or get a job on a merchant ship.

The invention of steam meant that the middle classes could afford to go abroad (though not many did), while the working classes now got annual outings to Blackpool. Many working class people did travel long distances but on a one-way ticket as you searched for a new life in the Americas. Not on a cheap all-inclusive holiday.

Flights changed everything, almost anyone could afford to go abroad. Trouble is that the planet can't afford it.

YANBU. I wanted to get the train from London to Paris for my DH's birthday but you would get much change from £500. It was less than £100 for the both of us on a plane.