02 July 2007

Back home

It's always nice to get home after a long trip.

The good feeling will stay for a while yet, with all the raw files to process. It will bear me through the dysfunctional aircondition at work, and even through the extra mess at home from redecorating the living room. Life is good.

Some interesting calculations:
The total driving distance for the trip amounted to 3008 km, with a total fuel consumtion of 249 litres. That's an average of 0,083 litre/km, which better than I expected for a 1997 Volkswagen Sharan. But it is still a lot. Using the conversion factor recommented by the US Environmental Protection Agency , it amounts to roughly 580 kg carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. That's half a year's quota of sustainable emissions according to some environmentalist organisations, who cite a value of 1,1 tonnes per capita as sustainable, based on estimated world population size in year 2020.

It is difficult to relate to those numbers rationally. Without committing the emission, the trip would have been impossible, and I wouldn't have got the photos... :-)
The interesting issue is how a trip like that could have been made with less emissions. A smaller car is an obvious one. Better planning is another, which I might come back to later.

As the RAW processing proceeds, most of the photos from the trip will be posted to my AlunFoto website, but a couple are destined for future ramblings here too.

Thanks for reading.

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