My carbon footprint is bigger than your carbon footprint

On Sunday evening, I returned a rental car at Los Angeles International Airport prior to boarding a flight to London. LAX is one of those airports where the car rental station is some distance from the terminals, and having returned your car, you board a shuttle bus that takes you to your terminal. There were only a small number of people on this particular bus, and the driver asked each of us which airline we were travelling on and hence which terminal we needed to be taken to. One of the other passengers was a young woman – perhaps 30 years old. She told the driver that she was flying on United, hesitated and said “…but it is an international flight. Is that the same?”. As is the case with many Americans, she gave the impression that she did not fly internationally very often, so I assured her that she was going to the correct terminal.

I asked her where she was going. She answered “Johannesburg”, and told me that she was going via London to get there. I expressed surprise that she had to take such a long route, and she told me that she could have flown to Washington and got a direct flight from there, but that the 15 hours non-stop from Washington to Johannesburg was a longer flight than she wanted to take. Personally, I have done more than a few 15 hour flights in my time, and I would not have made the same choice she did (for me, getting the total journey time down to as small a time is key, but other people’s mileage does vary, somewhat literally in this case). I mentioned that I had friends and family in Johannesburg and that I had visited that city earlier this year, and she asked me what it was like. I told her that the rich parts of northern Johannesburg (where she was going) are like southern California but with more fortifications, which may or may not have reassured her.

I asked her why I was going. She said it was “Business”, and that she was “involved in the Live Earth concerts”. I probably should have asked her how she was involved, or what she did, or something, but connections between LA and the music industry are not exactly surprising. I was tempted to make some snide remark about how the Johannesburg concerts had just been relocated to a smaller venue due to lack of interest, but in truth the discovery as to why this woman was travelling rather caused me to lose interest.

I suppose the real question might have been just exactly how she thought that flying lots of people like her from LA to London to Johannesburg was going to help global warming exactly, but I could not be bothered asking. And in truth it would have been rude to ask, because I was just making friendly conversation with a perfectly pleasant woman before catching a flight.

I fear though, that we are back to “essential” travel for “important” people like politicians, rock stars, and people who work in the music industry somehow not counting. Making sacrifices to save the world is something for the plebs to do.