As you know, I'm constantly going on about the need to reduce energy consumption and especially petroleum consumption. The reasons for this can be boiled down to:
National Security: The US spends 1 billion dollars per day purchasing oil from foreign countries, many of whom do not have our best interests at heart. Enough said.
Environmental: I mostly (about 90%) buy into the scientific consensus around human-caused climate change.
Although my life in general has a large energy footprint, this trip would be a significant impact relative to other things I do, so I feel that it's not a decision to take lightly. The reasons for this are:
Argument: Heli-skiing consumes a large amount of petroleum, driving up prices, helping to exhaust a critical and finite resource, and potentially lining the pockets of hostile nations.
Counter: I'm going to Canada for this, and Canada is a net oil exporter. Thus no mid-east oil. The other arguments stand.
Argument: Carbon emissions
Counter: One heli outfit sells carbon offset credits for their trips for $6.29 per person per day. I haven't researched this, but $6.29 buys about 1 Watt of solar PV generation capacity. I have a tough time believing that this is realistic offset. See the bottom of this post for a quick calculation.
Argument: I have a kid, and I feel like I should be able to tell him when he's older that the choices I made in life were consistent with leaving him a livable planet with sufficient resources to allow him to do the travel and other energy intensive activities that I've been fortunate to enjoy in my life. Since I believe that oil production will peak and begin to decline within 10 years, a trip like this is inconsistent with that statement.
Counter: It's possible that even if petroleum products become too expensive to allow the upper-middle-class to do things like heli-skiing using today's methods, biofuels or some other technological innovation will continue to make it possible. No guarantees though.
Another argument in favor of taking the trip is that I'd likely end out spending the money on something else which either uses energy or has embodied energy. The best thing I could possibly do with it would be to purchase some kind of renewable energy generation system (solar panels) which over the course of its life would generate more energy than it took to build it.
Of course, my personal decision of whether to do this trip won't affect whether a helicopter flies on a particular day, much less the fate of the planet. So perhaps I should stop over-thinking things and just enjoy life. After all you only live once.
Thanks for your time and your thoughts,
Witt
Carbon Costs of heliskiing
Assumptions:
- Emissions of a helicopter are 350 pounds per passenger for a 45 minute flight. (http://www.infinitehealthresources.com/Store/Resource/Article/85/1/1373.html)
- Each day of heli skiing involves 90 minutes of flight time (my guess)
- A 5-day trip would mean 4 days flying
So for the trip, we have 700 pounds CO2 per day X 4 days = 2800 pounds of CO2.
One heli operation sells carbon offsets for $6.29 per day. Let's say that $6.29 buys 1 Watt of PV generation capacity. Since I'm on a 5 day trip, I buy 5W. ,That little 5W panel generates 7.3 KWh per year. Over it's 20 year life, it'll generate 146 KWh of electricity.
the US grid produces 1.3 pounds of CO2 per KWh (http://www.carbonfund.org/site/pages/carbon_calculators/category/Assumptions), so my 5W panel over the course of its life offsets 189 pounds of CO2, falling a little short of the 2800 pounds generated by the helicopter portion of my skiing adventure.
It's possible that they're using a cheaper source of CO2 offsets. Like I said I haven't really looked into it.
