I guess when you ask for money from people, it is those people’s duty to question your merit. Giving money to a group or a cause or an investment, whatever it may be, is something that requires a lot of thought. So I suppose I can chalk all of the comments about our merit up to that, and respect all of those for asking us if our mission is truly worthwhile. The latest:
“Assuming 12 miles per gallon for your vehicles, you’ve put more than 70 tons of carbon into the atmosphere! That’s more than three times the average total emissions for an American…….about 6 times that of a European and 20 times that of an average Japanese citizen. That’s only for your driving, not taking other activities into account which would increase that number significantly.
Are you doing anything to offset these emissions?”
Thanks for asking Green Bill. We have been sponsored by Native Energy to offset all of the carbon emissions for the trip. Beyond that, you should take into account that we live like locals most of the time and our carbon footprint beyond the trucks is far, far less than anyone in the modern world. By the professional calculations of Native Energy in this partnership, our expedition is set to emit about 110 tons of CO2 over the course of the entire 2 year expedition. This number is actually not very high on world standards if you take a couple of other factors into account.
This number has typically been divided by about 5 crew members and sometimes as much as 9, so even with this 70 ton estimate above, each member of the crew is still actually well below the 20 ton per year American average. Considering the 110 ton estimate for the entire expedition spanning two years, if divided by 5, each crew member is effectively polluting 11 tons per year. For the last segment of the expedition we should have no less than 7 crew members in the trucks at a time, so this number will be even lower when it is all said and done.
So what is my point? The point is that we do everything we can to reduce the amount we pollute. We eat local food instead of imports, we give other travelers a lift to the next town, we camp about 50% of the time, we share hotel rooms with sometimes as many as 9 people, we are looking at getting LPG conversions on both of the trucks, and all of our time and efforts are part of attempt to educate more people about what is going on in the world. If there was a way to do what we are doing with hybrids or something else that pollutes less, we would be all for it, but the nature of the expedition requires these trucks, and many of the roads we travel could not be attempted without them.
So in response to Bill, we are doing quite a few things and believe that our goal will ultimately be worth the amount we have polluted. Do any of our readers have additional suggestions on ways we could lower our footprint even more? We are always open to new suggestions on this topic.
