How to get from Europe to Australia without flying
How long does it take to get to Australia from Switzerland? For Lorenz Keysser and Giulia Fontana it required six months of planning, 200 hours on trains and a fortnight on a cargo ship. From visiting Moscow’s Red Square and hiking China’s Laoshan mountain, to chugging across the Central Asian steppes, the journey felt like a privilege as well as, at times, a test of their principles.
The couple, both aged 23, don’t drive or eat meat. And three years ago they decided they couldn’t justify the emissions involved in flying. Lorenz was particularly surprised to discover that 60% of greenhouse gas emissions at ETH Zurich, the university where they both studied environmental science, came from business trips by air.
Read more: Could eco-friendly flying be on the horizon?
Giulia visited her family in Italy, and Lorenz his in Germany, by train. When Lorenz took a semester at Leeds University in the UK, he moved by train and Giulia visited him there the same way. Their vacations were to places accessible without taking to the air. “We were only travelling in Europe, doing hikes, and so it was not a problem at all,” Giulia says.
Read more: Trains vs. planes: What’s the real cost of travel?
But when Giulia’s best friend, who lives in Sydney, asked her to be maid of honor at her wedding, she was caught in a dilemma.
On top of the world: One of the highlights of their trip was hiking China’s Laoshan mountain
Sharing recipes and shooting stars
The couple pondered the journey and decided the time it would take meant if they went, they would stay downunder a full year. That meant Giulia finding a new job in Australia, and Lorenz working remotely on his studies.
As they researched train routes and discovered it was possible to travel by cargo ship, it became clear that Giulia really could be there for her friend’s special day. Lorenz says the scale of their undertaking crept up on him: “It was a slow realization that now everything we had planned over the last months will become reality.”
They set off last June, with Giulia traveling from Zurich to meet Lorenz in Berlin. They left Germany by train and traveled through Europe — from the German capital to Moscow via Poland and Belarus — then through Russia, Mongolia and China to Beijing before heading to Qingdao to catch a cargo ship to Brisbane, where they arrived six weeks later.
A cargo ship docks at Qingdao, where the couple began their sea crossing to Brisbane
“Probably the most remarkable moments for us were on the cargo ship,” Lorenz recalls. “We got to know the crew, and the engineer showed us around in the machine room. With him and one officer we learned how to ‘shoot’ stars with a sextant. We celebrated birthdays with the crew, helped in the kitchen — and sang a lot of karaoke.”
Giulia taught the ship’s chef to make tiramisu, and Lorenz made potato salad for an onboard party from his grandmother’s recipe. Members of the crew later visited them in Sydney.
Another highlight was breaking their journey across Russia in Irkutsk, Siberia where they hiked along the shores of Lake Baikal. “The forest was just so thick and luxuriant, and full of insects and butterflies,” Lorenz says.
Read more: Are cruise ships climate killers?
Like any adventure to far-flung locations, the trip also meant exchanges with people with very different life experiences, such as when a group of 20-odd army recruits piled into their train carriage.
“They were very keen to get our opinions on many tricky political issues connected to Russia,” Lorenz says. The soldiers even made the couple a gift of coffee, chocolate and, despite protestations, tinned meat.
It wasn’t the only time their vegetarianism mystified locals. Struggling to understand the concept, the cook at one restaurant in China ended up taking them to the kitchen and pointing out each ingredient in the fridge in turn to check if they could eat it.
The train journey between Irkutsk in Siberia and Ulaan Bataar in Mongolia was a monotony of grassy steppes
A growing movement
All in all, the trip cost the couple around €4,000 ($4,560) per person, most of which went on the boat tickets and visas. Lorenz has calculated that the outward leg produced just over 370 kilos (816 pounds) of CO2 each. A single economy flight from Zurich to Sydney produces 1.23 metric tons.
Read more: Paying for climate protection: How CO2 offsetting for flights works
But keeping their carbon budget in check took discipline.
“When we arrived in Brisbane, the cargo ship arrived directly beside the local airport,” Lorenz says. “We saw airplanes landing every few minutes — it was a bit like a fist in the face, saying, ‘you could have done all this in less than 24 hours.'”
Now, the couple are preparing to do it all over again. Their homeward journey will begin soon with a cargo ship from Melbourne to Japan, before they take a different route back through China and Russia.
Lorenz and Giulia are among 360 people who have committed to stop or limit their flying over the last two years with the No Fly Climate Sci movement. And many more people are making the same decision independently.
Read more: ‘Climate scientists should cut back on air travel’
Since Greta Thunberg made the 32-hour train journey to Davos last year, Sweden’s national rail company has upped its service to three trains a day on the Stockholm–Copenhagen–Hamburg line, and German rail company Deutsche Bahn has announced it expects train passengers on its intercity and international lines to top 150 million for the first time this year.
The freighter from China to Australia offered a very different pace of travel, the claustrophobic confines of an airplane cabin exchanged for wide-open views to the horizon
The privilege of tough choices
Still, Giulia and Lorenz are well aware that this shift isn’t happening fast enough, and are keen to communicate that the urgency of the climate crisis demands much more profound rethinking of how we run our economies.
“Although individual action is important, it’s not going to be enough. We really need systemic change,” Lorenz says.
They also stress that being able to travel the way they do is a huge privilege.
Just as only a tiny minority of people have the luxury of choosing to pollute our planet with airplane emissions — less than 20% of the global population have ever been on a plane — Giulia and Lorenz’s trip made them realize how lucky they are — due to accidents of race, citizenship, ability, sexual orientation and class — to be able to travel freely and safely across the globe, through one national border after another.
Journeys like theirs may not be the “new normal” but the couple say the conversations they had with fellow travelers along the way suggest those who are able to explore the world are becoming increasingly aware of the impact they have on it.
“We are in a minority, obviously, but there are a lot of people thinking about our way of traveling,” Giulia says.
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Environmentally friendly air travel? Electric planes of the future
Small, lightweight and emissions-free
Planes powered with renewable energy don’t produce CO2 or other climate-damaging emissions such as nitrogen oxide and particles. They are smaller, lighter and more efficient than planes powered by kerosene. The Alpha Electro from the Slovenian start-up Pipistrel is already proving this since 2015, when it had its maiden flight.
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Environmentally friendly air travel? Electric planes of the future
Hop on the flying bus
Most companies and scientists see the future of electric planes in regional transport. The Israeli start-up Eviation plans to revolutionize commuting with their nine-seater. The prototype Alice can fly for up to 650 miles (1,000 kilometers), and will take to the sky in 2019 for the first time, according to the company.
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Environmentally friendly air travel? Electric planes of the future
Up, up and away
The flying taxi of the German company Lilium had its first successful flight in April 2017. The five-seater can take off and land vertically, has a reach of 190 miles and travels from London to Paris in just an hour. The goal of the company is for people to one day be able to order their flying cab via app for the price of a regular taxi ride.
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Environmentally friendly air travel? Electric planes of the future
A mix of old and new
Some plane manufacturers don’t dare go all-electric just yet. In November 2017, Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Siemens announced they will jointly develop a commercial hybrid-electric prototype. The e-Fan X will be powered by three gas turbines and one electric motor. The companies aim to replace a second gas turbine with another electric motor at a later stage. A prototype is anticipated to fly in 2020.
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Environmentally friendly air travel? Electric planes of the future
Orange goes green
As part of British budget airliner EasyJet’s plans to become more climate-friendly, it has entered into a cooperation with the United States startup Wright Electric. The goal is to develop a completely electric-powered plane for up to 150 passengers. It’s not known yet when we can expect to see a first prototype.
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Environmentally friendly air travel? Electric planes of the future
Electric future
Experts believe that we could be flying in electric planes within 20 years. Various prototypes companies are working on have a range of a 155 to 650 miles. But technology is developing at an ever-faster pace. Who knows? One day, we might be able to travel around the world in emission-free planes completely powered by renewable energy. There’s hope for all environmentally conscious travel addicts!
Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/how-to-get-from-europe-to-australia-without-flying/a-49440630?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf