Dave Raval

We all know that the fuel used for transportation is a major problem for the environment. This is a conundrum - travel brings communities together and cheap flights seemed to be one of the best developments of the 20th Century. But the trouble is that travel technology in widespread use today is not yet 'fit-for-purpose' - it simply uses far too much energy.

As a result, I never fly within British mainland anymore. If I need to go to Scotland, then I use a sleeper train. I also try to minimise my travel overseas, and much prefer the train if going to Europe - it's much more fun as well as being better for the environment. Booking trains to Europe is not as easy as it should be, and you can only book them 3 months ahead, but have a look next time you want to visit Europe! - try (for example) this link for more information.

The Labour party wants to build a third runway at Heathrow, which will emit the same annual amount of carbon emissions as all of Kenya. The Tories say they won't expand Heathrow but they will build another runway somewhere else near London instead. (Doh!). I am opposed to airport expansion for environmental reasons and have joined Greenpeace in their campaign to buy part of the Heathrow site to block the expansion .  

Most  of my travel within the UK is done by public transport, cycling or walking. In fact, I took a detailed survey of all the travel I undertook in one whole month (July 2009), which you can see by clicking on the 'Read More' link below. Where driving is the only option (e.g. carrying a heavy load or visitng somewhere without good public transport), then I do drive. I bought a low-carbon Mini in 2008, which was at the time one of the very lowest carbon cars on the market. Its emissions are listed here . There's also a handy reference guide to all cars' emissions here . However since about a quarter or a third of the total energy used by a car comes from its manufacture, then if you really need a car, it is generally better to keep your car for as long as you need it, rather than to replace it regularly with the latest model.

The table below shows every journey I made in July 2009. In each case, I only recorded the type of travel used for the longest distance, eg if I walked to the train station and then caught a train, I recorded this as 'Train', not 'Walk'.  Doing a survey like this was very interesting, it made me realise that I don't cycle as much as I'd like to (though it was a very wet month in July!) and that I use more buses than I expected. I also used the car more in July than normal, though some of this was to visit my mum when she was taken to hospital.