In two months time I start an MSc in Climate Change and Sustainable Development at De Montford University. I’m going to be doing this part-time, and I’ll still be working 3.5 days a week at my current job. It’s all very exciting, but at the same time quite nerve racking. I’ll be attending lectures surrounded by lots of young, fresh faces, and I’ll be able to wander round campus mumbling quietly ‘By eck we were a lot more radical when I were a student, kids today .. I don’t know.. <grumble>’
As well as the studying, I want to see if I can do the course whilst still adhering to the goals of this challenge. One of the major requirements of the course is that I travel to Leicester one day a week to attend lectures and seminars. I’ll be going by train, aiming to catch the early train at about 6:50am (eek!), and I’ll get back at about 7:30pm. Being a mathematician, I want to see the numbers that arise from this problem.
My second home for the next two years.
I used this website to calculate the distance I’ll travel by train from Cambridge to Leicester and back. This came out to be 313.4 km. Now I think that I’ll be doing this journey about 50 times a year. To calculate the amount of CO2 that this journey will create, I used an emissions factor of about 60 g/km/person (from the Carbon Conversations book). The result worked out at
313.4 x 60 x 50 = 940,200 g(CO2)/person/year
which is about 940 kg(CO2)/person/year, working out at just under a tonne of CO2.
One way to address this is to consider offsetting. Now carbon offsetting does have it’s issues, such as allowing people to carry on the same carbon-heavy lifestyle. For me, I have to do this journey and my goal is not to have a lovely carbon heavy lifestyle (look at the time I have to get the train!), but to invest my time so that I may be able to more effectively reduce both my own and other peoples emissions. I do want to mitigate the effects of this travel, but not just in any old tree-planting way. One scheme I’ve found out about is the cooking stoves project, which aims to replace the dirty, inefficient stoves that people in many developing countries use, with cleaner more efficient ones. More information can be found out at http://www.carbonneutral.com/project-portfolio/cookstoves-projects/.
This is one possible action I’m looking into, and I haven’t as yet come to any decision on what to do.
Others issues I will face are
- Textbooks – cost, where to get them, borrow, or buy second-hand?
- Getting a laptop for working on the train – get a refurbished one, and do I actually really need one?
- Increased time spent on my computer, working on assignments will mean more energy used.
- Possible printing of course notes/lectures notes, study texts. Do I print or read on screen?
There’s a fair amount of things to deal with, but I think that for many of these issues there are solutions which allow me to do this course in as sustainable way as possible. I’ll make some more posts where I’ve worked further on these burning questions.