Should I drink 5000 cans of beer each year or fly to the Transportation Research Board annual conference in Washington?

The myclimate website suggests that “In order to stop climate change this is the maximum amount of CO2 that can be generated by a single person in a year: 0.600tCO2”. I’m not sure what ‘stop climate change’ means but let’s run with this figure.

Us greedy Europeans on average generate 7.2tCO2/year the site says. According to Statistica you can double that for the average person in the US.

Who wants to be average? But let’s assume we all are. That means the Europeans are really going to have to tighten their belts; and the Americans are really, really going to have to if they want to be average citizens of planet earth who want to stop climate change.

An average citizen of earth, if they did NOTHING ELSE (including nothing when they got to TRB!) would be able to fly to Washington from London economy class every 3-4 years.

So why the beer? Well, I was prompted by a comment, on one of my recent posts, by David A Hensher AM, PhD, FASSA, FAITPM, FCILT about the CO2 emissions from the prospect of me drinking beer with Tim Sullivan and Tom van Vuren MBE.

According to an academic paper from the University of Leeds published in January 2024 (‘Development of an open-source carbon footprint calculator of the UK craft brewing value chain’), the scope 1+2+3 emissions from an aluminimum can of beer of the sort I’m holding below is about 400g CO2e (see Fig 3 in the paper – I’ve taken the high carbon footprint scenario to be conservative [Ha! Imagine me being conservative]).

So, if I didn’t fly to TRB, I could instead have 5250 cans of glorious ‘Black Mass’ ale, lovingly brewed to achieve the Number of the Beast alcohol content (sorry, I digress! 🤘)

According to the brewer’s website, a can would cost me £3.33. The cheapest economy class return flight I could find this morning for TRB in January 2025 is £620. How many cans of beer would I get for £620? 186 cans. In terms of a currency exchange £ to CO2, that means the flight is 28 times cheaper than the beer in terms of the CO2 I’d be emitting (5250/186).

So what am I saying here to conclude?

1. Would 5250 cans of Black Mass bring me more or less happiness than going to TRB once? Yes, if I could also listen to heavy metal while drinking, and not have to drink more than a 30th of those cans each year.

2. If you want to address your carbon footprint, take care of the big stuff (flying) not the small stuff (drinking beer).

3. Flying is DIRT CHEAP in relation to the impact it is having on CO2 emissions.

#carboncalculator

#co2emissions

#offsets

#flying