Footnote: Int'l Travel Reminiscences

Personal and somewhat OT musings--some might say: 'antropological-ethnographic' remarks from Sweden

Dear readers, as I’m attending an academic conference this week, I’ve travelled to Gothenburg, Sweden, today. I suppose this won’t change my posting schedule, but I’d like to share some ‘international travel’ reports with you, much like I did about a year ago when I participated in a conference in Dublin, Ireland.

Please find my musings here:

Footnote 25: Int'l Travel Edition (personal)--Covid-19 is a Neuropathological Disorder

As to today’s trip, I flew out of Bergen, via Oslo, and arrived in beautiful Gothenborg to wonderfully sunny weather: what a difference a few degrees of latitude do make (although there was more snow at Oslo airport than outside my much more northern farm, but I digress.

Unlike last year, I’ve only spotted one person at Bergen airport and another two (one each) at Oslo and Gothenborg airports who were wearing face-diapers. At least something, in particular compared to last year’s experience with travellers in Amsterdam wearing fake haz-mat suits (see the link above).

While ‘international’ (which isn’t like, say, transcontinental trips within Scandinavia), travelling looked more or less ‘like before Covid’, but there’s a number of caveats:

• fewer travellers overall

• some Covid paraphernalia are still visible here and there, such as ‘keep your distance’ stickers, hand sanitisers, and the like, which apparently no-one bothered to remove

• more machines—dubbed ‘self-service' areas’—are around, esp. now with the EU moving the make ‘biosecurity-compatible features’ (think face-scans, automated passport controls, etc.) permanent and digital, as reported by friend-of-these pages Thomas Oysmüller.

Personally, it was quite strange to board aircraft again.

I doubt I’ll ever get around accepting air-travel as something approximating ‘normal’, even though I was more or less o.k. with that kind of notion as little as three years ago.

Also, I didn’t have to plastic-bag my toothpaste and deodorant, for whatever reason; neither did I have to take my laptop computer out of its bag.

Bonus Feature: CO2 Offsetting Accreditation

Finally, while waiting at Oslo airport, I noticed signs indicating that it is a ‘carbon accredited neutrality’ institution. If you’re wondering what that means, well, here we go:

Visit https://www.airportcarbonaccreditation.org/ and explore the depths of insanity and virtue-signalling.

It features a 6-step program to salvation, I suppose, according to the Gospel of St Greta of Climate Change. (AA requires 12 steps, but apparently, CO2 emissions are only half as bad as alcoholism, but I digress.)

From their ‘About us’ section:

Airport Carbon Accreditation is the only institutionally-endorsed, global carbon management certification programme for airports. It independently assesses and recognises the efforts of airports to manage and reduce their carbon emissions through 6 levels of certification: ‘Mapping’, ‘Reduction’, ‘Optimisation’, ‘Neutrality’, ‘Transformation’ and ‘Transition’. 

As we move to ‘Who’s behind it’, here’s what may be learned:

Airport Carbon Accreditation is owned and governed by ACI EUROPE in close cooperation with four ACI regions and with support of ACI World. The programme is administered by WSP, the environmental consultancy tasked with enforcing the strict criteria of accreditation and safeguarding the independent character of the programme’s framework.

There’s also regional institutions outside Europe.

ACI Europe is a ‘trade association’ of the airport industry—their chief lobbying organisation, appropriately operating out of Brussels. Its director-general is Olivier Jankovec, whom you could check out here outlining his current priorities.

Oslo airport, by the way, is in level ‘3+'‘, entitled ‘Neutrality’, according to the above-linked information. It means the following (my emphases):

Carbon neutrality is achieved when any residual airport emissions are compensated through the purchases of carbon credits. Carbon offsetting is providing funds to other projects that reduce carbon dioxide so as to make up for the emissions that cannot be completely eliminated by the airport. An airport could, for example, pay for a wind energy facility to replace a coal-fired power-plant.

Airport Carbon Accreditation has developed a bespoke Offsetting Manual based on a study carried out by the environmental consultancy Ecofys. Airports deciding to offset their residual emissions are advised to consult this comprehensive guide to choosing reliable carbon credits.

A key requirement of Level 3+ ‘Neutrality’ is that airports proceed with offsetting only once they have reduced their emissions as much as possible. To help airports assess whether they have already used all their current emissions reduction potential, Airport Carbon Accreditation is providing a dedicated Guidance on Reducing Emissions Before Offsetting.

Airport Carbon Accreditation supports the UNFCCC ‘’Climate Neutral Now’’ campaign

It’s a kind of financial shenanigans, run through the quite ‘obscure’ consultancy Ecofys, which operates out of the Netherlands (their website seems offline).

Oslo airport has been buying these ‘indulgences’ since 2009 and, in 2013, invested in a landfill in Argentina:

NEUTRALITY denotes that we compensate for the remaining emissions through carbon offsets. In 2013, we invested primarily in an Argentine landfill project. The project is UN-approved because it meets all the criteria for a CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) project.

As a result of its work on ACA accreditation, Oslo Airport boasts the ACA tree. Our zero-emission vehicles are wrapped in ACA colours featuring the ACA logo

There is no information as to Oslo airport has financed anything else since. I’ve asked Avinor, and if I’ll receive an answer, I’ll let you know.