Are your travel habits forcing you to fly the unfriendly skies? Flying on a jet airplane isn’t exactly the best way to reduce your carbon footprint. A roundtrip flight from New York to Los Angeles creates between 2 and 3 tons of CO2 per passenger. Unfortunately, unless you have two weeks to drive across country each way in your Tesla Roadster, your travel is going to put a strain on Mother Nature. Taking a plane is an occasionally necessary evil in our otherwise green-conscious lives. Still, there are ways you can fly smarter. Check out these suggestions for reducing your travel-related carbon impact from LiveEarth.org:

- Fly direct whenever possible. Landing and taking off consume the most gas during the flight. During a short flight, taking off can account for 25% of the total fuel consumption. Try to limit your flights to distances of 600 miles or more.

- For shorter distances, take the train. Seriously. For shorter trips where the time difference is less pronounced, rail is the only way to go. Spend an extra hour or two and breathe easier.

- Fly during the day; one study showed that nighttime contrails create more warming.

- Fly on a newer, more fuel-efficient plane, such as the Airbus A340 or A380 or a Boeing B787. Customer demand (and the cost of fuel) will bring us more efficient planes!

- Flying for business? Meet online or through video conference instead.

with Native Energy’s CO2 Travel Calculator, and measure the carbon emissions between different travel options for your next trip. You can also with the Trees For Travel Program, which plants trees in barren areas to offset your CO2 travel emissions.