2023-11-19 21:00:54
Would it still be possible in 2023: stand on the road with a thumbs up and hope that you get to Turkey on time? Trouw is hitchhiking to Ankara towards the climate summit. Partly regarding CO2emissions, but above all with the hope of great encounters.
Hitchhiking is super durable, but has all but disappeared. While it is also very social, and may help once morest polarization and people living in their own bubbles. Is there still a place for hitchhiking as a means of transportation today?
Lees here which initiatives want to put lifts back on the map.
To test that, travel Fidelity this year (partly) hitchhiking to the climate summit in Dubai. We take a week to hitchhike to Ankara, the capital of Turkey. Since it is too unsafe to hitchhike through Iraq, we fly from there to Dubai. This saves approximately 40 percent of emissions compared to a flight from Schiphol to Dubai, calculates sustainable tourism expert Paul Peeters of the Breda University of Applied Sciences. “Unlike with airplanes, where demand determines supply, with elevators you can certainly say that the cars are moving anyway, and that you are not releasing any additional emissions into the air.” However, a journalist plus luggage adds some extra kilos to those cars, so Peeters charges that small amount of extra CO2emissions.
Elevators unsafe?
Marjan Knippenberg, founder of the Nederlandlift foundation, calls hitchhiking ‘the forgotten option’ in traffic, and advocates that it will make a comeback. “Hitchhiking is sustainable, free, and you meet countless people you would otherwise never speak to.” The Nijmegen medical researcher herself hitchhiked to work at Radboud UMC every week as an experiment for two years. She thinks it is a shame that many people think that hitchhiking is unsafe and that motorists are out to harm others. Knippenberg was positively surprised by how easily she was always taken along, by how nice people are and by the nice conversations she had along the way. “Lifting has really made my worldview more positive.”
Knippenberg hitchhiked in the Netherlands, Fidelity wants to put it to the test in Europe. In the coming week you will read a column from the Klimaatlifter every day. Is hitchhiking indeed a pleasant way to travel? Who will take us, where are they going, and what do you discover regarding people when you sit in the car for hours? Are (truck) drivers across Europe actually concerned with climate and sustainability, or do they have other concerns on their minds? And will you be able to end up in Turkey in a week and catch the flight to the 28th climate summit?
Fly back
Traveled last year Fidelity partly by train to the climate summit in Egypt. Along the way we spoke to passengers across Europe regarding how they view climate change and sustainability. For example, Bulgarian student Presiyana Zaprynova (21) talked regarding her parents throwing all their trash out the car window, something she wanted to put a stop to. Stella Eckl (24) saw sustainability in Eastern Europe. Clothes were endlessly repaired by her Slovak uncles and aunts, vegetables for the whole family came from one large garden. Especially with her Viennese friends, everything revolved around consumption: shopping or going to trendy coffee shops.
But where exactly the train journey might be planned in advance, with hitchhiking the question remains who you are taking with you and where exactly. And above all: what happens in between. On the way back flies Fidelity from Dubai to Schiphol. We try to ‘compensate’ for these emissions as far as possible, through similar projects to last year; both trees, as clean cooking, as sustainable energy and developing countries and CO2-capture.
Also read:
Is there still hope for old-fashioned hitchhiking? These initiatives want to put it back on the map
Old-fashioned hitchhiking has all but disappeared, but may be making a cautious comeback. In an age of apps and screens, it will be exciting to see whether the analog elevator initiatives will be successful.
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