Trains, bikes and sailboats already exist, and choosing to travel more slowly can be a pleasure, too.
“I’ve seen more on my bike that I would have seen in my whole lifetime, if I’d been flying,” says Robbie Webb. He’s calling me from Ghent, where he’s staying with friends, nearly five months into his record attempt to be the first trans person to cycle around the world.
Webb started in Canada, biking from Vancouver to Montreal, then flew across the Atlantic and cycled from Portugal to Glasgow, and is now travelling through Belgium on his way to Turkey and Georgia. He’ll end his record attempt by biking through Australia and New Zealand.
That last leg, at least, will be familiar ground to the bikepacker, who did lots of cycling through Aotearoa before he had the confidence to set off on his world journey, which he has been planning for years. So far, he’s cycled 12,000 kilometres, about the distance from Auckland to Delhi, and watched the world unfold under his wheels, an utterly different form of travel to aviation. “I used to be a climate activist, and I think that this is one of the least harmful ways to see the world,” Webb says – although he has, of course, needed to use planes for connecting flights across bodies of water.
Webb’s long journey is a reminder that it’s possible to travel widely without relying on planes and cars – and their carbon dioxide emissions. Given the realities of climate change, and New Zealanders’ love of travelling, changing how we travel is increasingly urgent. “New Zealand is a very aeromobile society,” says James Higham, a professor of sustainable tourism at Griffiths University in Brisbane, who has been researching sustainable travel in New Zealand for three decades. Some 32,000 international flights arrived and departed from Aotearoa in 2023, and average annual household spending on domestic flights is more than $500. There are also nearly three million cars registered in New Zealand, most of them petrol or diesel fuelled.
It’s not just New Zealand; the increasing emissions of the travel industry are a concern around the world. The cost of flights has dramatically decreased in the last 50 years, while the number of flights globally has increased by a factor of eight over the same period. Aviation is estimated to be responsible for 2.5% of global emissions (although it’s contributed to 4% of warming because of other chemicals from planes, including water vapour).
However, the tourism industry as a whole is responsible for at least 8% of global emissions, and in New Zealand, transport is the biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions per capita (this doesn’t count the huge impact the agriculture sector has through other greenhouse gases like methane). Aviation is only available to the privileged; it’s estimated that only 11% of the world’s population fly in any given year.
Popular forms of recreational travel are very emissions intensive, with a seven-day cruise trip more than three times as carbon intensive as flying and staying overseas, and a return flight to Europe equivalent to driving from Kaitaia to Invercargill 10 times in a petrol car.
Changing how you travel is one of the best individual choices to reduce your overall carbon footprint. It’s much easier to choose to go for an e-bike holiday than it is to change the fuel that powers the massive ships which much of New Zealand’s food arrives on, or to alter the manufacturing processes of smelting metal (although that is possible too – but it can only be done by governments).
“In my lifetime, aviation has become absolutely central to tourism,” Higham says. He doesn’t think it’s reasonable to expect more than a small minority of people to stop flying altogether, but it’s possible for people to fly much less. The pandemic showed that New Zealanders would travel locally for leisure. “For so long we’ve focused on inbound and outbound international travel – but the majority of travel in New Zealand is domestic, there are lots of regional destinations to discover.” While the aviation industry talks a lot about electric planes and sustainable aviation fuel, anything commercially viable at the scale of current, fossil fuel-powered flying is decades away, and much of the chatter is simply greenwashing.
It’s important to remember, too, that climate change could take away many of the reasons people want to travel, and this can cause a bleak feedback loop where people travel more: flying to Queensland to see the Great Barrier Reef before it’s bleached into a barren wasteland, or taking a helicopter to see the Franz Josef glacier as its retreat makes the walk to the mouth longer. “Lots of people fly to Japan now to go skiing, and Australians fly to New Zealand to go skiing in Queenstown – because the ski fields in Australia are suffering the consequences of temperature rise ahead of the southern ski resorts,” Higham says.
Travelling is about what’s possible
“One of my favourite train trips was going from New York to Seattle via Chicago,” says train advocate Patrick Rooney, from The Future is Rail. He was in the US for work, and thought that getting a train back across the continent would be a fun, unusual way to travel. “I thought it would drag, but it didn’t; there was always so much to see.” One nice thing about trains is that you can walk easily around the carriages, unlike a bus, and they’re much less cramped than an aeroplane. Rooney had a “roomette”, with a fold-out bunk bed and space to sit.
Trains are much, much more efficient than cars or planes, even if they are powered by fossil fuels. “There’s much less friction of steel on steel than rubber on tarmac,” Rooney points out. Rooney has noticed how often train advocates in Aotearoa are people who have travelled on trains overseas – he’s taken trains all through southeast Asia – and want the same thing to be available here, as it was in the past. “There are so many practical, economic and social reasons to support trains,” he points out; for many people living in the regions in New Zealand, where train lines already exist, it would be much more convenient to hop on a train from Ōtaki to Te Awamutu, say, than have to drive to an airport, take a flight, then drive from another airport.
While New Zealand’s remaining inter-regional trains are largely aimed at, and priced for, international tourists, they could unlock other journeys: skiers could get to Ruapehu from Auckland or Wellington and take a shuttle up the mountain (if there was any snow left); trampers could get out at Arthur’s Pass for an amble up Avalanche Peak.
“Improving domestic low-carbon transportation is low-hanging fruit,” Higham says. “There are solutions we could advance tomorrow, if there was political will.” He points out how cycle routes in Central Otago have been a massive boost to the region, meaning visitors don’t just go to Queenstown.
Other countries already have measures in place to make flying less attractive, like France’s ban on short-haul flights that can be replaced by a train. China’s high-speed rail carries hundreds of millions of people each year, and keeps getting extended, making trains more appealing for many journeys.
Low-carbon travel options don’t have to be epic or international
Travelling the world by train or bus or bike isn’t always possible, but even when travelling in a carbon-intensive way, there are ways to generate less carbon. Instead of driving between beaches, sailing can be an option. While the hardcore might commit to buying a boat and living on it, the more sail-curious could take a day or overnight trip. Nelson company Abel Tasman Adventures offers both. “People want to do activities that are more friendly to the environment – there’s a green aspect in using the wind,” says Jane-Maree Holme, who manages the business with her husband Martin. The company already uses some solar panels and wind generators, and would like to eventually use electric motors, too.
The expansion of New Zealand’s bike touring routes, too, are great news for people who want to travel without using carbon. While many people might fly to the start of the Otago Rail Trail or Old Ghost Road, or use a car shuttle on the Alps 2 Ocean route, there are options closer to home, too. “I’m really interested in ways to combine bikes with public transport,” says Jonathan Kennet, who has just released an updated edition of the Bikepacking Aotearoa guidebook (co-authored with his brothers).
From Wellington, it’s possible to get the train to Petone to start the Remutaka Cycle Trail – or go all the way to the Wairarapa and bike back over the Rail Trail for a shorter ride. From Auckland, a ferry to Pine Harbour can be the start of a loop through the Hunua Ranges via the Miranda, then a train back from Pukekohe to make the ride easier. Getting the bus or ferry to Diamond Harbour in Christchurch can be the start of a weekend cycle touring through Banks Peninsula; and if you want to go further, there’s always the slightly less reliable option of putting your bike on the InterCity bus. E-bikes and adaptive bikes can make the joy of cycling available to many people who wouldn’t be able to do other outdoor activities.
“New Zealand has thousands of kilometres of road that are virtually empty and great for biking – but if you try riding on a state highway, you might not have such a great time,” Kennett says.
Changing how we think
Most of all, learning how to travel in a low-carbon way requires a shift in mindset about how and why and where we travel. That means seeing travel by bike, bus, train and sail not as a missed opportunity to go far and fast, but as a pleasure on their own terms.
“So many people think they’ve seen New Zealand, but they’ve just driven through it on the big highways,” Kennett says. “There are places you wouldn’t even call a town that are the sort of places everyone will stop and say hello – that’s something to look forward to.” And just in economic terms, people travelling more slowly and requiring lots of energy are “great news for local cafes,” Higham says, who certainly frequented many when he did Tour Aotearoa.
It won’t be easy to give up our love affair with planes, but staying on the ground, and learning to love it there, is an essential part of shifting to a world that isn’t burning itself up. And in the end, it might be a more pleasurable way to travel. “I talk to a lot more people,” Webb says. “It’s lovely to see more stuff, and move more slowly.”