The Window Seat: A Grey Area in Green Europe

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I’m just back from a trip to the Czech Republic and still suffering from some serious jetlag, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. On the way across the pond I read a stat in Vanity Fair’s Green issue that seriously bummed me out: the U.S. will likely emit 19% more greenhouse gases by 2020 than it did in 2000. Meanwhile, our friends over in the European Union have committed to cut those emissions by 20% by 2020 from 1990 levels. Ouch! I’m pretty sure I winced visibly at that one.

The staggering difference in priorities reflected by those numbers made me wonder if I would see a major difference in the day-to-day eco-consciousness in Europe in comparison to the U.S. To be fair, I was coming from one of our country’s greenest cities to a country led by a man who recently said that government spending on global warming studies were a waste of money and who has compared environmentalism to communism (which, if you know anything about the anti-communist sentiment that pervades the Czech Republic, is a pretty brawny statement). So perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me when recycling bins were nearly impossible to find, or that there was a shocking number of massive SUVs bumping over the cobblestones despite the tiny streets upon which they have to maneuver. I can only hope that a country which loves beer as much as this one does might find the effects that the current multi-year drought are having on their barley crops at least mildly concerning enough to consider that climate change might have something to do with it.

Clearly not all of Europe has boarded the green bandwagon just yet. But there’s no question that eco-consciousness on the continent as a whole is greater there than it is here. Beyond the EU’s emissions reduction commitment, anecdotally I was heartened by the only other country I had a very brief brush with on my trip -- the Netherlands, by way of the Amsterdam airport. There, I found about five recycling bins at every gate (of course the complicated instructions about which recyclable should go in which bin and how to open the darn things were all in Dutch so I had to watch someone else throw a newspaper in before I could appropriately chuck my International Herald Tribune and water bottle), and innovative energy saving measures being taken in all the public restrooms. But my favorite stat to illustrate Europe’s enlightenment when it comes to the environment is -- surprise, surprise-- a travel stat: on our sister site in the UK, www.lastminute.com, the rate of customers adding carbon offsets to the trips they book on the site is 10%. That number is a big one, and true testament to the awareness of the issues and willingness of travelers to take personal responsibility for their individual impact on the environment.

I hope that level of accountability catches on in the U.S. soon. Travelocity offers a similar option for travelers to offset their trip’s carbon footprint through the planting of native trees on protected lands. The best part about the Go Zero initiative is that you can purchase the offsets as part of your vacation package or as a stand-alone product. In fact, I was starting to feel a little hypocritical writing this rant so I just retroactively offset my European vacation (literally after typing the comma after “In fact” I did it!). Afterall, until that 2020 projection gets revisited by the powers that be, the responsibility to reduce the harmful effects of global warming in this country appears to be falling on you and me, and our personal travel is as good a place as any to start.

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