Mount Eyjafjallajeokull's eruption is a climate change disaster, releasing 150,000 tons of CO2 every day, with no signs of slowing down. Even more damaging however is European air travel, as seen in the diagram below courtesy of informationisbeautiful.net. Unfortunately "planes or volcano" is now a moot question. How can we avoid the global consequences of planes + volcano?
Renewed plane travel now means that people, governments and organizations worldwide must increase their efforts to reduce their carbon footprints.
In North America, it's hard to imagine what would happen if air travel were to suddenly stop. Not only would there be no more roses from Colombia or Californian strawberries in February, but people would be grounded as well. Europeans recently got a taste of how that feels, but when the effects of climate change become more severe, governments will be forced to restrict air travel by introducing quotas or raising prices, while improving train and ferry service. That's according to one of my favourite bloggers, ethicalcorporation-founder Toby Webb, in a post this week.
One option is to fly as much as possible before that happens, but here's hoping that people and organizations will reduce their carbon footprints now in order to avoid having to make bigger sacrifices in a few years.
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