Should students choose driving or flying to better the environment?
The sun is coming out again, classes are almost finished, and it’s nearly time to pack up and head home for the summer. Thousands of students all over Lennoxville and Sherbrooke choose to travel by car or plane to make the journey home, but what are the environmental implications of choosing one over the other?
The majority of the concern is still over one of the climate change factors, like carbon emissions that are produced from the use of cars and planes. So which one of these modes of transportation produces the least carbon emissions?
The simple answer is cars that are relatively fuel efficient will beat out planes in terms of emissions per person.
Specifically, if you had to travel from Montreal to Toronto by plane, the flight would produce about 0.43 metric tons of carbon, while using a car would only produce 0.11 tons of carbon. However, the gap in emissions between using a car or a plane does get smaller if very far destinations are chosen like Montreal to Vancouver.
Even if driving is the better choice because it produces less carbon emissions, the real power behind using cars is by carpooling. For example, if students from Bishop’s decide to carpool, their emissions would be essentially cut by half, or even a quarter. However, if they all choose to use a plane the same amount of carbon emissions would still be produced.
This is also true for the opposite of carpooling. If students all choose to individually drive their cars because of the belief that it would be better for the environment, the amount of emissions could equal or top an airplane’s because the amount of cars on the road is now multiplied.
On the other hand, students must not forget that while cars are better for the environment in terms of emissions, planes will still be flying whether there is one empty seat or not. A collective impact from more than one person would be necessary in order to remove a plane from the sky.
Though driving is backed up by numbers, it isn’t always the best choice to make, especially if you want to head home quickly. Economically, taking a plane would likely cost you less than fueling up a car for the 4900km trip from Montreal to Vancouver, not to mention that it would be a lot less time consuming.
Therefore the biggest way that students at Bishops’ University and the rest of Sherbrooke can help reduce their carbon emission is to get together and carpool. Carpooling isn’t only achieved by driving a car though. Public methods of transportation such as buses and trains would make your carbon footprint significantly smaller.
