> If you are reading this August column of Green is the New Black, it is very likely that you have either recently been away or have an imminent overseas trip. Of course it’s now a given that flying is seriously bad for the planet and that the best way to avoid generating all those emissions is to avoid getting airborne in the first place. But we also know that international travel, whether for business or pleasure, is often unavoidable and/or irresistible; and that, especially given the current mayhem in the UK’s seaports, there are often no other options to get to where we need or want to go.

> So what to do when, despite every good green intention, you simply have to fly?

I... live in such a different world from this person. Though admittedly everything from the UK is "overseas," I doubt they're really that concerned about a hop over the Channel here (there being a perfectly good tunnel as I understand it).

I'll generally agree with "carbon offsets" as "Greenwashing," though there are some notable exceptions - the Climeworks style "deep rock fixing of CO2" seems entirely legitimate, if a bit more energy intensive and harder to scale than pencil whipping some forest data. But it's also far harder to game (outside outright fraud in the sense of "Claim 10MT injected and captured, only injected 8MT and observed 2MT leaking back out the bore holes"). If it involves "forest protection" sort of techniques, it's probably having nearly zero net effect (nobody particularly cares which acres of forest they're cutting, so... go over a few miles instead).

What annoys me greatly are the people who claim climate change is a huge looming crisis that will end humanity... so therefore the only thing one can possibly do is vote one way or another and do nothing else unless It Has a ROI. And changing the way we live is literally unthinkable, so... They'll Think of Something. Too many Hollywood movies with "pulled out of the writer's rear end" endings that magically solve all problems at the last minute. And I don't think that's likely.

The future is going to be, like it or not, far lower energy, with a lot more "use energy when available and use less when it isn't" - so, basically, the entire history of humanity until the past few hundred years. And there's a lot that can be done to work towards this - some of which does look like dusting off the old work from the 1970s in which a lot of this was worked out, in detail, with practical testing. It looks a lot more like passive solar collectors and a lot less like blockchain...

Lately, I've been trying to figure out what it looks like to take "tech money," in some form or another, and make that more directly useful in places where it can have an actual impact. I've been trying to do things like organize group buys of solar panels and help people do their own solar (a DIY install out here, ground mount/grid tie is around $1.25/W right now in materials if you can get a good deal on a truck full of panels shipped in), and I've put in an EV charger or two in places that didn't previously have any - not that it gets much use right now. Or maybe large ebike purchases, fund half on donations from tech workers, half paid for by lower income users. Open to ideas, but there's a lot of money sloshing around in the tech industry and I don't see much in the way of actually focused use. Start building out 1-2MW solar facilities on spare land closer into town instead of building 100MW farms out in the middle of nowhere, or even just helping fund solar carports. Split the cost with the property owners.

Or to figure out how to do local, small scale carbon capture on surplus energy. Locally, I've no shortage of basalt, and I know one can grind it and weather it on fields, but can one do something more aggressive, like a fluidized bed reactor sort of concept? I don't have the skills to do all of the work required (mostly the chemistry to verify it), but that sort of small scale thing could scale out and even if it's not 100% efficient, well, it's happening.

But I reject the concept that individual action doesn't have an impact, because any sort of massed action starts with individuals who care and are willing to take the actions and steps required to do something. I'm now responsible for several additional solar installs in the area (rural, conservative, and, yes, I live out here willingly and enjoy it) from either talking about it to people who wouldn't otherwise have considered it, or providing technical documentation and resources to people who have the skills to do the installs, but not the design work from the ground up. Having something I can point to, take the covers off, and say "This is what it looks like" is very useful, so people can see if it's something they're willing to do. I'm hoping a 21kW array near me will be approved for operation this week if all goes well. When people live out what they talk about, that works an awful lot better than the standard practices of "trying to insult people into agreeing with you."

Anyway. I agree, buying offsets isn't likely to be useful, but neither is sitting on our collective asses waiting for someone else to solve the problem. If anyone has ideas in the areas listed above, I'm easy enough to find!