Adam Sébire

Stories of Climate Courage: ‘Selecting “offset your flights” always felt too easy’

Selecting “offset your flights” always felt too easy. How could I ever comprehend my carbon emissions, flying Canberra-Singapore-New York, premium economy return, for a business trip?
That’s 9.9 tonnes of CO₂e.
15 Eucalyptus viminalis seedlings to sequester one tonne.
149 trees. Two full days’ planting: the land’s degraded and drought’s made it dry. Now they’ve just got to be looked after — for the next hundred years. If there are no more really bad bushfires. Which there almost certainly will be.
Just for one traveller… one trip… that next time I’ll insist it be done via videoconference.
— Adam Sébire (Craigie, Australia)

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Tiny Coronavirus Stories: ‘Marooned midway, on a tiny island’

Borders snap shut ahead of me in Greenland and behind me in Svalbard. I find myself marooned midway, on a tiny island in the North Sea. Kindly locals let me stay in the lighthouse keeper’s quarters and ask me to self-isolate. I’m guessing the light’s former custodians would laugh at the imposition. Through the (now-automated) lantern’s fresnel lens the world is turned upside down. But there’s no sense of anything amiss, other than a sky curiously free of the usual trans-Atlantic contrails. I redraft my neglected PhD. Maybe Slow Travel is just what the doctor ordered?
— Adam Sébire (Utsira Lighthouse, Norway)

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