Holiday planning: planes, boats or trains?

We are planning our next wild orchid hunt in the wilds of Andalucia, but how best to travel there without burning too much fossil fuel and adding to climate change ?  Once we drove our campervan 3500 miles to and from Europe’s orchid capital, the Gargano Peninsula in southern Italy – but it was a lot of driving. So, last spring we went to the Cevennes by train from London to Avignon, and it only took a day with minimal CO2 emissions. So, I was delighted to discover we can also reach Seville by train from London in 16 train hours. It would be faster to fly there, so I used government figures to check the climate impact of these alternatives:

• Drive our EV all the way: 58kg of CO2 per person. But it’s a long way – 1360 miles each way – and it’s unclear how many EV chargers we will find once there.

• Train all the way: 67kg per person

• Put our camper van on the Portsmouth – Bilbao ferry then drive the rest: 133kg per person

• Driving our camper van all the way with 2 people: 174kg per person

• Direct flight from London: 257 kg per person

So, we will take the train and hire a car there, happy that we’ve done what we can to reduce our climate impact.

The worst solution would be taking a cruise to Spain. Excluding the carbon emissions of a week in a hotel (168kg of CO2), the carbon cost of a no-fly cruise to Spain is nearly 2 tons (1932kg) of CO2 – 4 times more than return flights. Cruise ships are floating hotels, needing constant power for lighting, air conditioning, water desalination and waste treatment. While some modern ships use liquefied gas to reduce CO2 emissions by 20%, they also emit high levels of methane, a potent greenhouse gas 28 times worse than CO2.

Potentially we could also pay to “offset” our emissions. However, a 2017 report showed that 85% of carbon offset schemes were ineffective, and a 2023 study found over 90% of rainforest offsets "worthless".  Unfortunately, there’s no way we can plant our way out of the climate emergency. We need to cut emissions now, not in the 15-35 years it takes trees to grow or a development project to bear fruit. Worse, many projects that claim to offset emissions are going to happen anyway, or are poorly managed (eg. the trees are planted but not watered consistently).

So, when planning holidays this year, you might like to reflect on how you get there. Travelling by train does take a bit longer but is a lot greener, and you get to see much more of the countryside and its people than flying. Good travels!