Anatomy: written in the first person...

I am David's carbon footprint drifting majestically from the deep blue sky.

Over the weekend I traveled to Alice Springs for work. Alice is about 1500 km from Darwin, I flew there in an airplain!

 

This year I have done and have planned way too much air travel! Too much flying around in carbon emitting jet planes for me! 

Damn! I ride my bicycle most of the time and avoid driving so I can reduce my impact on the planet... and because I actually like riding my bike because bikes are fun and cool! But it's just so easy to book a cheap flight in a jet to the opposite side of the country and it's part of my job or sometimes just so tempting to go somewhere and off I go again and Boom! A whopping big 'Vapor trail through the empty air...' tons of carbon ejaculated across the sky! 

That's millions of years of sequestered sunlight and CO2, mixed with the oxygenated air we breath, burned in a furnace to produce thrust enough to force a tin can full of apes into the air like birds, propel them beyond the peaks of the highest mountains at speeds bordering on interstellar, across seas and deserts and mountains and time zones in less time than it would take me to ride my bike to Katherine!

I wonder if you could represent a person's carbon footprint by measuring the distance of an airplane vapor trail from horizon to horizon, how much of the sky would mine take up?

Alice Springs was nice. Whenever I arrive there by plane it takes me an hour or so to adjust. I don't know why. There's a very different aura in the Desert and it has some weird effect on my brain and my eyes. I literally can't see properly when I first arrive. The sky is to big or the air is too clear or something. It's like you shouldn't really just turn up there out of the sky. Maybe in the desert we should only arrive slowly on foot or by camel?

Male Zebra Finch

A Wren (Female, didn't have time to ID at the time)

I don't like to be the one burning the carbon, but how else would I be able to see these beautiful desert bird species in a weekend and be back with my family in 3 days?!

Peace!