A great place to work, plus some serious plans for spending serious money on big new stuff. Maybe there’s a place for you. And there’s Canada Line.
Vancouver International Airport is looking for 26 (at the moment of writing) new people in openings ranging from entry-level (or nearly so) up to senior level (Directors).
Plus, there’s this: 75 projects, worth $9.1 B.
Why do we not shun airplanes like we shun cars. What is the GHG equivalent of the airport expansion? Is it like adding 10 major freeways to the Lower Mainland?
An excellent point.
Flight adds about one kilogram of CO2 per passenger to the atmosphere every 20 kilometres or so. I would challenge our fellow Pricetaggers to be a little more forthcoming about their own carbon footprint and methods to remediate it when writing about their frequent world travels, or calculate their personal lifetime carbon footprint. Once completed, then I’d be curious to know what they are going to do about it.
In the interest of honest disclosure, my partner and I are planning a trip to London this fall. That works out to ~375 kg CO2 per person (~7,500 km direct flight YVR-LHR) one way, or 1.5 tonnes return for two people. How can we justify that? With some guilt, I’d say because it’s our first trip overseas ever, which is unusual today for a couple in their 60s, and we don’t plan more than one more (to Paris). Public transit figures large in our plans in these great cities. Our friends who have three dozen trips under their belts — and whose Millennial children travel at whim without a second thought — look at us funny, as though we suffer from a lower standard of living.
And because our carbon footprint is reasonably low to start with considering we don’t have kids (that in itself should add up to major credit in a cap and trade scheme ;-)), and the one who is not retired carpools a reasonable 13 km to work and back. On weekends our late model econobox sits unused 95% of the time while we take transit, walk or stay at home to work on creative projects. Once we’re both retired we’ll probably sell the car and use Evo or Modo once every week or two.
We could do better though we are already below the average household emissions, but lack of resources prevents us from continuing to renovate to improve the energy efficiency of our old house beyond the significant work we’ve already done. So it seems addressing transportation and demographics (we don’t have kids) remains our most valuable contribution, with two one-time exceptions.
Thank you Kirk and Alex for mentioning the elephant in the room. I once posted something about this on Pricetags more than half a decade ago and got derision back from your most ubiquitous commenter, so I’ve been very wary about posting a reply to Alex’s request for info on what others do.
For 10 years we calculated our annual carbon footprint and included our Amtrak/VIA/Greyhound/transit/bike based vacations. We each kept our annual footprint below 3 tons, based on:
http://www.ecocivilization.info/three-tons-carbon-dioxide-per-person-per-year.html
We won’t use Amtrak under the current administration, so this year flew to Huatulco – 1.23 tons of CO2 each (including the RAD forcing). Compare that to the 0.15 tons for the train Seattle then transfer onto the train to LA (and return).
Like Alex, we have had no children. We have no car, use Car2go once a year, have never used our Modo membership, have been vegetarian for 30 years, buy 90% of our clothes at Value Village. The energy efficiency of our home this year showed there were no improvements possible because it was so highly rated.
Sorry if this sounds like we’re boasting, but just wanted to show that it is possible to live very comfortably within your carbon budget and still travel (though it probably has to be to the US, locally or in Canada).