I try to keep lowering my carbon footprint and consuming less. And there are moments when I am proud of parts of my lifestyle that consume less The more I lower it the more I realize how much I pollute, carbon- ate, consume, waste etc. For example my business trips to Dar es Salaam.
I fly to Dar es Salaam every 2-3 months for board meetings. We are told the jets are one of the worst polluters. In addition I use taxis to get around.
From the airport it costs 15,000( $12) to 20,000 t shillings. Then I have to get to a place called Kijitonyama for the meeting and back downtown to hotel and back to airport. I get lifts some times, but i spend $30-$50 on taxis every trip. I get $120 and hotels cost about 80.
I am a bit of a cheapskate and whereas I earn enough I don't earn very much compared to people of my socio economic background. So it does not make economic sense to spend all that money on taxis, besides the fact I consume a fair amount of petrol sitting in taxis.
I have been wondering if it would work for me to bicycle around Dar on my trips.
The main road from airport to town has a service road and even the highway has a shoulder. Often there are traffic jams so traffic is crawling.
What stops me is :
-I need to carry a bike back and forth under the 15kg limit.
-Dar can be very hot and humid, and sometimes I go from airport direct to meeting. How am I going to deal with the sweat?
- I need a bike. Where will I get a collapsable bike?
- I sometimes stay at meetings until after dark or near dark and from there "go out". What do I do? Ride in the late evening in Dar? People say Dar is more dangerous.
stayed tuned.
Which brings me to another point. Should I be flying? Can I justify the pollution of me flying? Should I take the bus instead, or take 3 days and ride?
These board meetings should be online / videoconferencing. We should also interconnect ;-)
ReplyDeleteYes you are quite right. Although then I would miss out on the social time in the evening, which is usually includes you.
ReplyDeleteIf you feel so bad about your carbon footprint maybe you can plant three trees for every trip to Dar
ReplyDeleteIs three trees enough to cancel my portion of the carbon realeased?
ReplyDeleteAhhhh. Well, since you are a college trained mathematician, and as someone who has a lot of spare time at these meetings at Dar, you could figure it out! Start with 1 tonne of gas is equavalent to 55 Gigajoules, and a typical biomass thermoconversion plant will generate 1 MW capacity for every 19,700 tons of bone dry wood (assuming 20-40% efficiency).LOL
ReplyDeleteI think you should use a unicycle. You wouldn't need to colapse it. Byrna
ReplyDeleteJeff -
ReplyDeletecomeon do the math for me. Seriously i wanna know. We are planting closer to hundreds of trees per year, half maybe survive. But we are also planting for those who arent planting.
Byrna. LOL. I might as well walk as unicylces bo pretty slow.
ReplyDeleteVery thoughtful post about your carbon footprint.Don't dare to ride in Dar during the night and pass in the slams such as Manzese or Kwamtogole maybe with cheap Indian bicycle and without your laptop.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunate, i haven't see the Bode bode (these cyclists carry passenger by the bicycle as those in Sanawari Arusha, if they were there it ought be an ideal to use them.
I think the ideal of planting trees might work
And several year later you finally got around to it - Shesha
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