How Greta Should Have Crossed The Ocean

David Trammel's picture

I so want to do this one day

I didn't want to fly – so I took a cargo ship from Germany to Canada

Greta and her enablers really missed a good opportunity by using that high carbon racing sailboat. Imagine had she used a cargo ship and spent 15 days tweeting and doing interviews. She would have been much more effective.

I was struck by this comparison:

Carbon emissions (according to weight of passenger)
Flight Frankfurt-Vancouver: 1.3 tonnes

Cargo ship Hamburg-Halifax (via Antwerp & Liverpool): 5.3kg
Total CO2 Hamburg to Vancouver: 209.5kg

Greta and her handlers would have never done this. Too boring, too staid, too old school, etc, etc.

Why, she would have had to use LESS!

Teresa from Hershey

Justin Patrick Moore's picture

This reminds me of the travels of the editor of 2600 magazine & host of the radio shows "Off the Wall" & "Off the Hook". in 2005 he journeyed around the world without using any air travel. The whole story is documented on the 2600 website as a travel journal. Indeed, this is the way to travel...

https://2600.com/travel/16-july-2005

"The idea is to travel from New York to New York by circumnavigating the globe without making use of air travel. Hence the QM2. Along the way, I'll be working on the latest 2600 Films project, which I'll get into in a little more depth onced I'm actually on the boat and have confirmed that I haven't forgotten the camera. I'm also going to be doing two radio shows a week, each in a different fashion. "Off The Wall" will air on Tuesday nights on WUSB and over the net. That program will be comprised of a recorded CD that I will have produced from wherever I happen to be a day or so in advance and then (hopefully) uploaded to the station. "Off The Hook" on the other hand will be live and it will sound like I'm on the phone because I most certainly will be. The "on the road" shows are always a challenge since I have to be a host without seeing anyone and there are often technical issues of every sort imaginable. It makes for exciting and sometimes exasperating radio.

I'm due to arrive in England on Saturday morning. I'll spend some time in London and then make my way over to What The Hack, the once-every-four-years Dutch outdoor hacker conference the following weekend. After that, it's eastward by train to Berlin, Warsaw, Minsk, and Moscow where I'll be meeting up with some friends for another adventure I've always wanted to take part in: the Trans Siberian Express. This train (the longest line in the world) will take us to Mongolia, where the plan is to ride jeeps around in the Gobi Desert and environs. That should be pretty memorable on many levels. After this, it's on to China, first Beijing and then Shanghai. I realize it's the most populated country in the world so a one sentence description is completely inadequate insofar as summing up my expectations. But for now I have nothing else to say about it other than the fact that from Shanghai I'll catch a boat to Osaka, Japan and from there hopefully a ballet train to Tokyo. I've heard much about these ballet trains and I hope to finally see for myself how they're able to incorporate dance into the narrow corridors of a train. And then, another really unusual leg of the journey as I cross the Pacific Ocean but not on a luxury liner. In stark contrast, I'll be one of a maximum of eight passengers on a freighter hauling God knows what to California. And once back in the States, the final and probably scariest part of the trip: Amtrak."

ClareBroommaker's picture

I actually suspect you are not pulling our legs. Eh? Isn't the barre also called a rail?
Oh, check out their mullet train, as well. Barbers on board, you know,