The slowest road is the most sustainable - Vol 5 Sneak Peek

In an age of wanderlust, how can we travel the world without causing more damage? Traveller Megan Claire Routbort shares her experiences. 

Article by: Megan Claire Routbort

Artwork by: Lorna Dolby-Stevens

I’m jolted awake at half-past three in the morning when a Serbian border guard jams into my compartment, flipping on antiseptic lights and demanding my papers. I rub the sleep from my eyes and fish out my passport. The guard grunts, stamps, and moves on, but the train remains frozen for over an hour. It’s another delay, but I settle back into my couchette with no worries; such a scene is typical in my quest to travel the world on a shoestring (carbon) budget.

Six months ago, my partner and I set off on a low-carbon trip around the world. Our goal? To visit people around the world fighting the climate and nature crisis, sharing stories of the solutions it will take to dig the world out of the massive hole that we’ve caused by burning fossil fuels, unchecked, for decades. The concept is called ‘The Green Journey’ and the ambition is to reach no less than all continents without flying or driving. It’s the ultimate experiment in ‘green’ travel, but the journey itself implies a question: with the technology available today, can we really make it work?

‘Green’ travel may seem oxymoronic when we look at the data: worldwide, transport is the second highest-emitting sector, accounting for around one-fifth of global carbon dioxide emissions. Taken together, road and air travel make up nearly 85% of emissions from transport; so we decided to eschew flying and individual cars on our journey. Instead, we bike, sail, take trains and make use of other forms of local, public transport.

To address long-haul travel, technological solutions for lower-impact air travel and marine transport are under development, but we’ll need to reduce as well as replace to tackle transport emissions in a time frame compatible with a livable future. It’s all well and good that in November 2023, Virgin Atlantic made headlines when theyflew the first transatlantic voyagefueled with 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), but a dig into the data reveals SAF as a standalone decarbonisation pathway for plane travel is far from sufficient. SAF, in its most viable form, is essentially waste fats and used cooking oil. Unless we all start eating a heck of a lot more fries, there won’t be enough to go around

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