Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet, and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
Earlier this year, we did an episode comparing emissions for flying versus driving the same distance. But what if you’re driving an RV?
We’re answering this question because my family goes out to Oregon twice a year. And like a lot of people these days, we’re ditching air travel and driving across the country instead.
Here to help me answer this question is Stephen Porder, our founder and the provost of sustainability at Brown University. Welcome, Stephen.
Stephen Porder: Hey, Megan, how’s it going?
Megan Hall: Good. So, let’s take a step back first, in our other episode, we said that driving creates less emissions if you have more than two people in the car. Remind me, why is that?
Stephen: Well, it’s kind of weird, actually. But when we calculate emissions for flying, we do it by seat. So four people travel on a plane, the emissions we say are four times as much for those four people.
But when you’re driving in a car, we say, hey, the family packed into the car, we just count the emissions from the car. So it’s the same regardless of the number of people. So if you have four people in a car, that is more efficient in terms of emissions, then four people on an airplane.
Megan Hall: How does that calculation change if we’re driving a giant, old RV?
Stephen: I guess it would depend on how giant and how old.
Megan: Okay, we bought something called a Dodge AVCO. It’s from 1979.
Stephen: It may surprise you, but I am not an RV aficionado. So I don’t actually know what its gas mileage is like, my guess is not very good.
Megan: How guilty should I feel about all of the gas we’ll be burning?
Stephen: That’s a very deep, philosophical question. I’m sure that an RV is going to use more gas than if you got into a little compact car with yourself and your family and loaded everything up, but on the other hand, you won’t be staying in hotels, right? So maybe it won’t be so bad? I’m not sure.
Megan: But I’m assuming that I’ll still create more emissions than if we flew across the country?
Stephen: I guess I would say it’s likely. But there are four of you. So it might come out about even we’ll have to see.
Megan: How could I test this out? Should I be collecting some data?
Stephen: For sure. The first data we need is how many emissions would come from you flying across the country so we can compare?
Megan: Okay, so I used a few emissions calculators, and for a family of four flying one way from Boston to Portland, Oregon, it looks like we’d create between two and a half to three tonnes of co2.
Stephen: Yeah, that’s kind of a lot. It’s about, I don’t know, six months worth of emissions for the average person living in France.
Megan: How do I compare those emissions to what I’ll create driving the RV?
Stephen: Okay, well, that’s easy. When you’re on your road trip. Just keep track of how much gas you buy and how far you travel.
Megan: Do I have to keep track of it the entire time? Because we’ll probably stop for gas like several times a day.
Stephen: I know you’re gonna be very busy in the RV. But it probably makes sense to do it at least a whole bunch of times. Traffic conditions, Hilliness, wind speed, all those things are going to affect your gas mileage. So in order to get a good average, you really do want to do it a lot. Maybe not the entire way. But why not?
Megan: Ok, then what do we do?
Stephen: Well, why don’t you call me when you get to Portland? And we’ll, we’ll talk about what we found.
Megan: Okay. Thanks, Steven, talk to you soon.
Stephen: Talk to you soon! Drive safely. Have a great trip.
That’s it for today. For more information or to ask a question about the way you recycle, use energy, or make any other choice that affects the planet, go to “the public’s radio dot org slash possibly.” Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.
Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society and the Public’s Radio.
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