{"id":150,"date":"2025-12-17T13:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T13:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.sciencepicker.com\/?p=150"},"modified":"2025-12-17T13:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T13:34:07","slug":"which-one-is-better-for-environment-driving-or-flying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/which-one-is-better-for-environment-driving-or-flying\/","title":{"rendered":"What is better for environment \u2013 driving or flying?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Driving a fuel-efficient car usually emits less\ngreenhouse gases than flying. On assessing the global warming effect of a\ntrip from Philadelphia to Boston which is at about 300 miles distance, an\nenvironmental news website calculates that driving would generate approximately\n104 Kg of CO2. The CO2 is a leading greenhouse gas. This amount of CO2 is\nproduced from a typical medium-sized car, regardless of passengers, while\nflying on a commercial airplane would produce approximately 184 kilograms of\nCO2 per passenger. That is a lot!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carpooling can help lower down greenhouse-gas emission<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Carpooling makes the most environmental sense than driving alone. Let\u2019s take an example here: 4 people sharing a car would collectively be responsible for the production of only 104 kilograms of CO2, while the same four people taking up four seats on a commercial airplane would produce around 736 kilograms of CO2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flying is economical for long distances<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Just because driving in a car might make\nenvironmental sense than flying doesn\u2019t mean it always makes the most sense. Driving across the United States<\/strong> in a\ncar would cost far more in fuel than to fly nonstop from one end to another.\nThat\u2019s not even taking the time spent at driver-thru, restaurants, and hotels\nalong the way. People who are interested in calculating fuel costs can consult\nthe American Automobile Association’s nifty online Fuel\nCost Calculator<\/strong><\/a>. There you can enter your starting city\nand destination as well as the year, make, and model of your vehicle to get an\naccurate estimate of what it will cost to travel between points A and B.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Source: Shutterstock.com\/Skycolors<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Travel-related emissions can be balanced through carbon offsets<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Once you have decided whether to take car\nfor your trip or rather fly, make sure you purchase carbon offsets for\nrenewable energy development to balance out the emissions your car is generating. TerraPass<\/a><\/strong> is a\ncompany that makes it easy for you to calculate your carbon footprint based on\nhow much you drive and fly, and then will get you offsets accordingly. Monies made\nthrough carbon offsets fund alternative\nenergy<\/strong> and other projects will ultimately take a bite out of or eliminate\ngreenhouse-gas emissions. The company will also calculate your household energy consumption<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public transport beats both driving and flying<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

However, an individual\u2019s emission from taking\na bus, the ultimate carpool, or a train than private transport would be\nsignificantly lower. Paster believes that a cross-country train trip<\/strong> would produce approximately half the greenhouse-gas emissions<\/strong> from driving a\ncar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, the only way to travel 100% green \u2013 use\na bicycle or just walk, but the trip will become long enough as it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Driving a fuel-efficient car usually emits less greenhouse gases than flying. On assessing the global warming effect of a trip from Philadelphia to Boston which is at about 300 miles distance, an environmental news website calculates that driving would generate approximately 104 Kg of CO2. The CO2 is a leading greenhouse gas. This amount of CO2 is produced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-and-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":613,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.science-pickers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}