 I'm currently in Moscow and Russia and I'm going to take the longest train ride in the world the Trans-Siberian Express and just go and go from Europe to Asia because I want to figure out how to travel sustainable what's the best way to take the bus, the train, the plane so I committed to myself to make a video on this trip which is going to take seven days and at the end I should have figured it out. So this beautiful train ride here is the driving on the Trans-Siberian Railroad Express which goes from west of Russia to the east or the other way around depends how you go but this is a super long track it's over 9 000 kilometers it takes about 186 hours to complete it so that's just like seven full days 24 hours in the train so basically a lot of sitting and sleeping so you have beds in there but also restaurants more about that later so this story actually started about a year ago because more often for my work I get invited around the world and more often now this is in business class and so in order for this story to understand we need to go back one year where it all started let's go so it's my first time flying business class I don't think I'm really suited for it I got holes on my shoes two different socks broken pants and some tomato sauce on my shirt all right so this starts off good look mama my priority I don't have to wait in line like the normal people and while waiting for my plane I got some free snacks in a special lounge area the seats in the plane itself are like transformers there are buttons and hinges everywhere really everywhere there's enough leg space this is actually where for me I got some free super useful socks mouthwash and some other stuff I really needed all of this it says no one ever but hey I can chill with a nice tea served in the real ceramic cup eat a proper meal with real metal cutlery and watch the office for the 10 000 time and get some sleep and there are so much space that I can actually fully lay down I did not expect that man this is pure comfort flying business class is very comfortable I could literally do this every week so fast forward one year later I couldn't stop thinking about that extra space I used to sleep someone could sit there right how much more carbon emission does that take extra or actually flying in general and I've been looking into it so let me explain okay so basically if you travel you use energy and emit carbon in the air and carbon causes climate change not cool so the question is which transport to choose planes buses trains cars because they all have a different carbon footprint plane the highest and train the lowest but actually wait not always see here's where it already gets a bit more complex bear with me I'll get you through this because it depends a lot on your situation for instance what type of car you drive whether you drive a loan or together if the train is powered on diesel or electricity or whether a plane flies on lower high altitude now luckily there is the internet not in this train though online you can find these carbon calculators that help you put in your trip select flight buzzer train and it calculates the amount so you can compare it and take the best option for instance this trip to Russia would take me 220 kilogram of carbon with the trains 900 with a car and a thousand with a flight and actually if I would have taken this flight in business class it would be double 2000 kilogram of carbon business class takes double the amount of carbon boom now I hear you're thinking 2000 kilogram of carbon is a bit abstract now there are also some funny calculators that put it in a bit more perspective same thing you fill in your details let it think part 1.4 ton of carbon for this trip and as you might have noticed this fart calculator shows a different amount of carbon 1400 kilogram instead of a thousand kilogram and the funny thing is that most calculators actually have quite a different output for the same trip it's it's actually not funny it's a bit annoying it's not accurate at all and a bit of a nerdy side note I do want to mention all of them any tool on the web only measures the usage not the full footprint of the trip for instance it also requires materials and resources to build the entire infrastructure build the planes the road the railways and while making and maintaining everything you also need a lot of energy so in a way we should not only compare the usage of each trip but everything that is needed to make it happen but okay okay let's not go that deep okay so let's say you roughly figured out your carbon emission let's say you use 120 kilogram nowadays you can quite easily offset your footprint by planting some trees you visit the website filling your carbon and they plant let's say 10 trees to even it out and this is a very common practice to do but unfortunately the planet doesn't really work like that but to explain this we need to go out of the train picky so when I first heard about this I was a bit overwhelmed but I do think it's very interesting to know and it's also good information next time you're on a party to explain to your friends so here we have a tree and to grow a tree you need to have carbon so carbon in the air is extracted and the tree uses that mass to grow which is already kind of magical so the thinking is if we emit let's say 20 kilogram of carbon in the air we need to make sure we plan the tree so we compensate the carbon that is usually in the air and compress it into the mass of a tree however the fuel and kerosene from transport comes from fossil fuels which are deep down in the earth and it took them thousands of years to be there so if you extract them to the surface we suddenly have a lot of carbon which wasn't there before I mean the carbon was there on the planet but deep down inside of it and not on the surface layer in the air that we all live in and breathe so we're kind of slowly overdosing our planet with carbon on our surface layer so growing a new tree to compensate for the old carbon isn't really the same thing now it's still better to plant a tree than no tree I mean you still extract carbon out of the air but I just wanted to make sure that you understand the difference between old and new carbon so now back into the train man that's a lot to digest and to be honest all of this information didn't really make it easier to answer my question on how to drive a sustainable it only got more complex so many different variables it makes me more confused it makes me not want to think about this stuff at all I'm just not care like okay they have time for a proper break let's get out it's a break they have to chop off all the ice that is on the train we're currently halfway in the middle of Siberia in Ukstuut time to get some fresh air and it seems doable because it's cold like I think many other places in the world also here they have a big pollution problem it's called snow but they have the latest russian technology to clean it up but when walking around and zooming out on this topic I realized a painful truth I'm looking at it wrong because traveling simply takes energy that's just how it is I mean I can maybe try to really find out exactly how much carbon a trip takes and then see if it can hopefully get more efficient but instead of trying to get a bit more efficient here and there the biggest win is to not go to reduce the amount of trips I take however nowadays we are always trying to make it cheaper more comfortable and easier to do so instead of doing it less we're actually going to do it more more often on holidays meeting friends around the world having a wedding abroad and obviously people do it it's fun it gets more and more easy I mean let's just have a look at my own travel habits so I travel a lot wait let me actually show you in the last five years I've been to Cape Town Kazakhstan Singapore Maldives they actually have the best sticker Korea Ghana India Malaysia Thailand US Maldives Brazil US Kenya Nepal Thailand Vietnam Chile Cambodia Indonesia Mexico Dubai Kenya Maldives Ukraine and Russia so yeah many places around the world and I would say all of them are for work never for holiday I'm going to either do a presentation visit the landfill do research make a video and I would say 95% of these trips I'm invited I mean sure provide me a free plane ticket and I'll come it's a bit like giving me delicious candy sure I'll eat it and especially if you put it here right next to me in front of my face sure I'll eat it it's too easy it's too tempting I can't control this and that's where the problem lies it's too easy so my approach for traveling is going to be the same with candy I need to put it far away like somewhere over here I need to make sure it's not easy to grab but somewhere more far away so I can still grab it but it makes me think twice a bit more conscious decision making and I need to do the same with traveling try to make it a bit more difficult for myself so this is what that looks like so we're currently traveling third class I'm going to talk a bit quiet because it's kind of busy here a lot of people on the square meter so this is my house it's my bedroom where I sleep and it's a bit tight but it works and let me show you around the rest of the space because it's kind of interesting so let's start downstairs so here we have the office area living room with a good view here's the toilet it's very metallic funny water tap only works like this never seen that before give a few plugs so we need to share that is not true so this is the third class now let's go to the second so here's second class it's much more individual compartments where people sleep restaurant super exciting some snacks drinks so the restaurant isn't really exciting because they have something which is probably the best thing about this whole train let me show you so here we have the best thing about the train it's a free hot water supply so hot water comes out there which you can use to make a nice tea or also porridge in the morning which I really like to do or noodles in the evening so everyone really uses that thing and the train feels a bit like a big family there's this mom of the train that makes sure it's all clean and helps you out the grandmas are very happy to give you some candy and you can play some games with the kids inside the train it's very warm 24 degrees so everyone is wearing flip-flops and shorts and then when you go outside in the night it's minus 25 for such a massive difference and if you ask them how they do it and when I realized making this trip and that it really takes a lot of energy to go to the other side of the world it's something I forget when I go by plane because it's so easy and this approach makes me very aware of that it makes me aware that it's not something I should really want to do every week it's slow and comfortable and just intense but I would also say it gives a much richer experience you see more of the country you have more time to absorb everything and you might meet some funny people along the way alright so made it in Vladivostok that was a lengthy trip and you can really know this now we're in asia it really has this tropical weather it's minus five instead of minus 17 yeah and I realized I wanted to set a few commitments for myself to make sure I don't just hop on a plane next time so commitment number one the lame one if I do end up making a flight I'm going to compensate it with carbon but three times the amount so I'm going to offset it triple it's weird that this stuff isn't really mandatory yet commitment number two I'm never ever in my entire life going to fly business class again I'm just going to stick around with the normal people commitment number three within Europe I'm not going to take any planes anymore from now on it's just going to be the train and 32-hour bus rides yeah now this might seem like a dumb approach to you but I think it kind of works for me to limit myself and I'm still able to do what I want to do and I would highly recommend to have a look at your own habits as well and see if you can change something in there because in an ideal world we can just travel around and we don't emit any carbon but realistically this is not how it is today even the aviation industry in itself so the planes are planned to double within the next coming 15 years so that means way more planes way more carbon and way more fossil fuels and sometimes it's just better planning or combining trips or maybe taking the train instead of the plane but I would say try to find that sweet spot where you can still do what you want to do so you don't have to limit yourself but you also reduce the amount of carbon in the air for now thanks for watching I'm going to continue my trip in Asia and if it was a bit nosy I'm sorry because there's a car road right here but I just wanted to show this big submarine so see you in the next story hopper video all right so if you liked this video I would recommend to watch the fuel of electric cars it's a video where I go to Chile to visit a lithium mine to see what it takes to drive electric and how much emissions you use with that if you didn't like this video at all and hate the topic of transportation watch this video where we raise a chicken but overall many more videos on storyhopper.com