A train passes a field of sunflowers in France. Photographer: Georgina Bowater/Corbis.
Usually, the phrase "adopting a green lifestyle" implies an act of selfless sacrifice. If we're reducing our carbon footprint, we must be giving up something fun, just as those on a diet have to let go of their favourite treats.
That's certainly the implication this summer as our leading politicians come under pressure to cut down on their CO2 and take a holiday without getting on a plane. Pity the likes of cabinet ministers James Purnell, Jacqui Smith and Hazel Blears, who clearly feel obliged to follow the prime minister's lead and vacation in the UK, or the foreign secretary, David Miliband, journeying to France and Italy by train. How enviously they must be eyeing their former boss, Tony Blair, as he jets off to soak up the Caribbean sun at Cliff Richard's Barbados villa - for the fifth summer in a row. (Off topic, but what is it with Blair and holidays? Why can't they just pay for theirs, like everyone else?)
In this respect, I am pleasingly on-message: I'm heading off on holiday myself next week and yet I will go nowhere near an airport. I'm taking the train to France. As you can imagine, this allows me to enjoy a pleasing aura of piety as I bid farewell to colleagues at the always environmentally conscious Guardian Towers.
Except there's a catch. The truth is, I don't feel I'm making any sacrifice at all. Because I hate flying.
What kind of hardship is it to forfeit the right to stand in multiple queues for hours on end at Heathrow airport, or to trek to the badlands of Luton or Gatwick? Is it meant to be painful that I won't have to line up at a glacially paced security check, removing shoes, jacket and, these days, for all I know, underwear?
And then there's the flight itself. Any parent of young children knows what an ordeal that is: corralling the little ones into a tiny space, buckling and unbuckling the seat belts as they decide they desperately need the toilet just as the plane hits turbulence; the elbows in the face, the tutting from fellow passengers, the apologies, the getting up and down, the lost teddy that slides down several rows of seats and has to be retrieved from under the feet of the sleeping, obese man in row 64; the refusal to eat the cardboard pasta served as "lunch", the numbing cramp that sets in as junior decides to sleep on you just as your leg is folded into a circulation-denying position. I feel no sense of loss that I won't kick off my vacation with a trip so exhausting you need a holiday just to get over it.
Even before kids came along, I hated flying. Irrational, I know, but I find it frightening: the loss of control, the sheer helplessness up in the sky. I can make my palms sweat just thinking about it.
Now, though, I'm actually looking forward to our journey next week. The kids are thrilled by the idea of a ferry and an overnight train, and I'm sharing their excitement. Even if we drive several hundred miles, I know it'll still generate a fraction of the carbon we'd have contributed to on that plane.
The only question is: if a green sacrifice involves no sacrifice, do you still get to feel self-righteous?
