Solarpunk Travel

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Community for those focused on sustainable travel. Our society's current levels of energy intensive and frequent travel are not compatible with life on a finite planet. We advocate for long-term slow travel to see the world, and low energy local travel to deeply experience your community. Green washing free zone.

related to sustainable travel:

[email protected] ← open to all train chatter (but note the instance is centered on the midwest USA)
[email protected] ← UK Rail and Trains
[email protected] ← UK public transport

related to travel generally:

[email protected] ← general travel
[email protected] ← general travel (this whole instance devoted to travel but note there is an instance-wide no politics rule there)
[email protected] ← Europe focus

The communities listed above are decentralized. Centralized instances are omitted as they go against the fedi purpose and it’s better to cultivate digital rights in the free world. That means instances that have a disproportionately large population or are centralized on Cloudflare are not listed.

founded 1 year ago

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Can a flight be ok to do for "holidays"? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I like travelling by bike, but i am not the biggest fan of doing roundtrips, i much prefer moving further and further away. So on longer trips i will end up way far from home, and since travelling by train across Europe, can be a real ordeal (especially with a bike), i sometimes take a plane back home. I guess busses would be an option too from some locations, i personally absolutely hate travelling by bus though. Weak excuse i know.

I am able to rationalize to myself that it is ok to take that flight, i spent now weeks doing low impact travel and can end it with a boom and still probably had less impact then with my regular life at home (i have not really done the calculation tbh). Of course, if it is reasonably easy to get home by train i will definitely prefer that, and i absolutely don't always end up taking a plane.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you ever take a flight?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is a complex question with no easy solution that makes sense for everyone. A few notes from my personal perspective on it:

What you do in terms of everyday life is where the greatest focus should be in terms of carbon footprint and what not. As an example, let's say you drive, and decide to go someplace 500 km away on vacation. You think wow, a 1000 km round-trip is a lot. But if you're putting 20K km/year mileage on the car just commuting, running errands around town, etc. that's what really adds up for most people.
If your vacation has an element of visiting family or friends, just do whatever it takes. Life is short.
Hauling a bike around over different modes of transport sounds like a giant hassle. Is there any way to rent one at the destination? Failing that, maybe something like a small folding escooter might travel better?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I agree with the everyday life behaviour being the most impactful.

Renting is not an option, certainly not an escooter, haha. I mean i can disassemmble my bike to take it on most trains, but it is still a big hassle to lug it around, together with my other baggage, changing trains etc, and still train connections can be far from optimal