I use public transport often when I have the option of using a car, try to use locally produced goods, don’t eat meat, am careful to switch off lights, use heaters only when really necessary, and despise air conditioning. Yet in the last few months I have been responsible for over three tonnes of carbon dioxide being added to our already polluted atmosphere, just through air travel, according to Climate Care. Three tonnes!

Issues of environmental protection seem to be much more openly discussed in the British media than at home – interesting, given that New Zealand supposedly prides itself on being “clean and green”. Perhaps it’s because living in such densely populated little space like London one is much more aware that we are all just wallowing in our own muck. “Climate change” is not portrayed as a dubious theory that only wacky, knit-your-own-muesli Green Party types believe in. The UK’s equivalent of Don Brash – Conservative Party Leader David Cameron – rides a bicycle and speaks vociferously on the urgent need for action to reduce the speed of global warming.

On a personal level, air travel is the single most polluting action we can do. A plane journey produces more than twice as much carbon dioxide than a train trip of the same distance. But Europe is the world leader in air travel. Incredibly cheap flights abound: 25 quid return to Bologna, Barcelona, or Berlin. No-one really wants these prices to go up – but the truth is that they encourage seriously un-environmentally sound practices and don’t reflect the true cost to the planet of the flight.

A couple of things over the weekend have brought this up in my mind. On Sunday, a group of Plane Stupid activists, dressed in suits and led by a Baptist Minister, sat themselves down on the taxiway at the East Midland’s airport in Nottingham. While they get points for trying – especially the use of establishment symbols in the suits and Reverend – the downside of staging a protest on a runway is that no-one is allowed within cooee. I don’t know how they got in there, but the camera operators weren’t game for the same tricks, and the result was very distant shots of barely distinguishable activity. A slightly more accessible crack at the same topic came in the Independent on Sunday. Commandeered by editors of The Rough Guide, the paper’s travel section looked at responsible travel.

The whole picture’s pretty disturbing. On my upcoming one-way flight to Madrid I will account for a mere 0.14 tonnes of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere. But on a return flight home, from Heathrow to Auckland and back again, each passenger accounts for spewing out 6.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Various organisations like Climate Care, Carbon Neutral, CO2 Balance or Carbon Footprint allow you to pay for your pollution to be offset by way of environmental investments like planting trees, but these remedies can only do so much. We really do need to reduce our air travel.

Living on the other side of the world from most of my friends and family make it inevitable that I will periodically churn out tonnes of greenhouse gases getting home. I am entirely hippy-critical on this one. But I will make a conscious effort to use alternatives to air travel. I will try to resist the absurdly cheap flights. And don’t be too surprised if you hear I’m coming home overland on the trans-siberian railway.

Other posts by Katie Llanos-Small