With everyone going green, what about rallies around the world? Persuading people to drive long distances and raise money for charity is the most excellent of ideas. Sadly the truth is that cars, especially old cars and big cars, churn out plenty of nasty pollution. We've thought about this, so this page is about as green as we could make it...
Power Station, Ulaanbaatar, MongoliaIf two people drive 9,000 miles from London to Mongolia and the car consumes petrol at around 30mpg, the result is around 3.2 Tonnes of CO2. By comparison, the equivalent flight for 2 people produces about 2 Tonnes of CO2 (See www.climatecare.org [1]). However, considering the relative timescales, we can’t make a direct comparison as someone who flies will be burning up further emissions by spending the rest of the month travelling around once they arrive.
What can be done to reduce these emissions? Firstly, drive a diesel car. It makes a massive difference. Secondly, think very hard about how you are getting back. Take the train if you can, as this causes a fraction of the damage a flight does and you'll see all the things you missed on the way there when you were concentrating on your driving...
Sadly, we're still going to be pumping out a load of nasty CO2, so we're going to do something about it, firstly by planting trees. Trees slow global warming by sucking up the carbon from the atmosphere. This is not perfect: the carbon is not removed altogether, it is just stored within the trees, and can easily be released again. On the other hand it is easy to organise and measure, and trees bring a variety of other benefits too.
Sagsai, Mongolia'Lightbulbs in Africa' is the alternative and, if done properly, is the better way to offset carbon emissions. These sorts of projects reduce emissions that would otherwise have been produced and are funded by your offsetting contribution. These projects don't just avoid future emissions they significantly reduce the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere now.
We'll be getting all the teams to work out their carbon emissions and working out the best way to cover the cost of offsetting the emissions produced during the rallies. This will be paid to Atmosfair (www.atmosfair.de [2]), who are one of the best organisations providing offsetting services.
We are planning a carbon free rally using cars converted to run on vegetable oil - watch this space.
Click here to talk about this page in our forum [3] or just add a comment below:
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Links:
[1] http://www.climatecare.org
[2] http://www.atmosfair.de
[3] http://www.charityrallies.org/smfforum/index.php?topic=13.msg27#msg27