It’s tough work trying to lead a low carbon life. But according to my partner it’s much harder living with an “eco warrior”. Going to Portugal by train was not Laura’s idea of the perfect holiday. But after some heated discussions she accepted the challenge. After all it was never going to be as tough as last year’s cycle ride to Paris! So we bought Inter Rail passes as if we were teenagers and booked ourselves into a small organic farm near Lisbon.
The first thing that hits you is that it costs more to go by train. We paid about twice as much compared to flying. That’s crazy. If we want to persuade people to use low carbon modes of transport, then we need to give them incentives. The new Liberal Democrat Climate Change policy – the most radical and practical of any political party – calls for significant public investment in our railways and fares we can afford, paid for by carbon taxes on road freight and domestic flights.
But we’re not in power yet! So for now it costs more to travel by train. That said I would pay a bit more for the adventure and convenience of boarding a long distance train. You can pitch up at the station minutes before a train leaves. Nobody forces you to strip or confiscates half your wash kit for security reasons. You get real beds (although we didn’t quite master the tricky art of sleeping on night trains!). Instead of a plastic tray of plastic airline food there’s the joy of restaurant cars, pristine tablecloths and waiter service (see photo below). You never know who you’ll meet. And of course train operators don’t lose your bags. So I'll take the train over the plane any day.
But are trains really green? Clearly electric trains running on renewable energy (wind, solar, wave, hydro etc) would be. But most of Britain’s trains are diesel or run on electricity generated from fossil fuels or nuclear. People sometimes say nuclear power is carbon free, but it’s not. Digging up and refining uranium, building nuclear power stations, trying (and failing) to dispose of radioactive waste – that all requires huge amounts of fossil fuel and releases vast quantities of carbon dioxide.
Spanish and Portuguese trains run on a higher proportion of identifiably renewable power – primarily wind. Zipping through the Iberian countryside we’re struck by the evidence. Every hill top seems to have a wind turbine on it (much like every village in England used to have a windmill in the eighteenth century). Spain currently gets 8% of its electricity from wind and is aiming for 15% by 2010. The UK has nearly half of Europe’s wind resources but only gets 1.5% of its electricity from wind. That’s a scandal.
The answer to the question “are trains green?” is that, as a very rough rule of thumb, travelling by rail creates about one tenth of the emissions per passenger mile that flying does. And this differential is likely to widen over time as trains become greener by using biodiesel or renewable energy.
There is unfortunately no technological fix for planes on the horizon. It’s not simply about the carbon dioxide they emit. Vapour trails add to the greenhouse effect. We simply have to fly less. Or stop using carbon for anything else. That’s why I hope to persuade our Executive to set up a Camden Carbon Offset Fund that will allow those that have to fly for whatever reason to pay for the damage they cause so that we can invest in renewable energy generation and energy efficiency projects here in Camden.
A mere 27 hours after we left Belsize Park we arrived in Lisbon to be greeted by the sun, a smiling Portuguese waiter and a delicious fish lunch. However it was a bit of a struggle ordering it since we don’t eat fish unless we’re sure it’s not a variety that’s being overfished or being unsustainably caught in trawler nets. “How did the fish come from?” I asked the Portuguese waiter in dodgy Spanish. “The sea” was his bewildered reply. When you love fish, as we do, trying to do the right thing all the time is hard work. But in a foreign language you don’t speak it’s doubly difficult.
We eventually arrived at our destination – a small organic farm on the Atlantic coast outside Lisbon. Our host was an ex-diplomat called Fernando who seemed to have more pictures of himself with world leaders than organic produce in his farm. But his wife did manage to serve us one entirely homegrown meal. Fernando’s catch phrase was “can you sell my organic limes?” He could say it in five languages. We said we’d try but we weren’t hopeful. Yet when we got back Abel & Cole, who supply us with our weekly organic box, were on the lookout for limes so Fernando’s entire crop is now on its way to the UK.
Now this farm was a little out of the way and of course we didn’t have a rental car. For the first day or two we set off bravely on foot every morning without ever reaching the beach or indeed anything of note. For those that have read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” this was very zen – you have to learn to enjoy the journey not the destination! On day three we spent a comical few hours running from one rural bus stop to another trying to work out timetables and routes, and watching buses roar past on the other side of the road. Day four found us hitchhiking with two budding Portuguese poetesses who didn’t stop talking for one minute.
I secretly vowed to let Laura rent us a car in week two if she insisted which she did, for two days at least. A very small car. And we only used it a couple of times. Honest!
After a week on the beach in the Algarve, including a night on a very eco-friendly campsite (unlike our hotel which ran its air conditioning full blast with all the doors open), we headed for a romantic weekend in Seville, then Madrid and the magnificently green Atocha station (see photo below), and finally Paris and its great free bike scheme, which I gather Ken is now seeking to emulate. A magical ride through wonderful scenery and historic cities on trains that put ours to shame. Would we do it again? Too right we would. But we might take sleeping pills next time!
The first thing that hits you is that it costs more to go by train. We paid about twice as much compared to flying. That’s crazy. If we want to persuade people to use low carbon modes of transport, then we need to give them incentives. The new Liberal Democrat Climate Change policy – the most radical and practical of any political party – calls for significant public investment in our railways and fares we can afford, paid for by carbon taxes on road freight and domestic flights.
But we’re not in power yet! So for now it costs more to travel by train. That said I would pay a bit more for the adventure and convenience of boarding a long distance train. You can pitch up at the station minutes before a train leaves. Nobody forces you to strip or confiscates half your wash kit for security reasons. You get real beds (although we didn’t quite master the tricky art of sleeping on night trains!). Instead of a plastic tray of plastic airline food there’s the joy of restaurant cars, pristine tablecloths and waiter service (see photo below). You never know who you’ll meet. And of course train operators don’t lose your bags. So I'll take the train over the plane any day.
But are trains really green? Clearly electric trains running on renewable energy (wind, solar, wave, hydro etc) would be. But most of Britain’s trains are diesel or run on electricity generated from fossil fuels or nuclear. People sometimes say nuclear power is carbon free, but it’s not. Digging up and refining uranium, building nuclear power stations, trying (and failing) to dispose of radioactive waste – that all requires huge amounts of fossil fuel and releases vast quantities of carbon dioxide.Spanish and Portuguese trains run on a higher proportion of identifiably renewable power – primarily wind. Zipping through the Iberian countryside we’re struck by the evidence. Every hill top seems to have a wind turbine on it (much like every village in England used to have a windmill in the eighteenth century). Spain currently gets 8% of its electricity from wind and is aiming for 15% by 2010. The UK has nearly half of Europe’s wind resources but only gets 1.5% of its electricity from wind. That’s a scandal.
The answer to the question “are trains green?” is that, as a very rough rule of thumb, travelling by rail creates about one tenth of the emissions per passenger mile that flying does. And this differential is likely to widen over time as trains become greener by using biodiesel or renewable energy.
There is unfortunately no technological fix for planes on the horizon. It’s not simply about the carbon dioxide they emit. Vapour trails add to the greenhouse effect. We simply have to fly less. Or stop using carbon for anything else. That’s why I hope to persuade our Executive to set up a Camden Carbon Offset Fund that will allow those that have to fly for whatever reason to pay for the damage they cause so that we can invest in renewable energy generation and energy efficiency projects here in Camden.
A mere 27 hours after we left Belsize Park we arrived in Lisbon to be greeted by the sun, a smiling Portuguese waiter and a delicious fish lunch. However it was a bit of a struggle ordering it since we don’t eat fish unless we’re sure it’s not a variety that’s being overfished or being unsustainably caught in trawler nets. “How did the fish come from?” I asked the Portuguese waiter in dodgy Spanish. “The sea” was his bewildered reply. When you love fish, as we do, trying to do the right thing all the time is hard work. But in a foreign language you don’t speak it’s doubly difficult.
We eventually arrived at our destination – a small organic farm on the Atlantic coast outside Lisbon. Our host was an ex-diplomat called Fernando who seemed to have more pictures of himself with world leaders than organic produce in his farm. But his wife did manage to serve us one entirely homegrown meal. Fernando’s catch phrase was “can you sell my organic limes?” He could say it in five languages. We said we’d try but we weren’t hopeful. Yet when we got back Abel & Cole, who supply us with our weekly organic box, were on the lookout for limes so Fernando’s entire crop is now on its way to the UK.
Now this farm was a little out of the way and of course we didn’t have a rental car. For the first day or two we set off bravely on foot every morning without ever reaching the beach or indeed anything of note. For those that have read “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” this was very zen – you have to learn to enjoy the journey not the destination! On day three we spent a comical few hours running from one rural bus stop to another trying to work out timetables and routes, and watching buses roar past on the other side of the road. Day four found us hitchhiking with two budding Portuguese poetesses who didn’t stop talking for one minute.
I secretly vowed to let Laura rent us a car in week two if she insisted which she did, for two days at least. A very small car. And we only used it a couple of times. Honest!
After a week on the beach in the Algarve, including a night on a very eco-friendly campsite (unlike our hotel which ran its air conditioning full blast with all the doors open), we headed for a romantic weekend in Seville, then Madrid and the magnificently green Atocha station (see photo below), and finally Paris and its great free bike scheme, which I gather Ken is now seeking to emulate. A magical ride through wonderful scenery and historic cities on trains that put ours to shame. Would we do it again? Too right we would. But we might take sleeping pills next time!
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