Every journalist keeps a notebook. Mine has two columns this summer: one for stories, one for carbon.
In August I begin an internship at Al Arabiya English in Riyadh, flying into the beating heart of the global oil economy to report, in part, on the energy transition trying to replace it. The irony is not lost on me. Aviation produces around 2.5% of global CO2 emissions, and my own routing from Glasgow is the single largest entry in my ledger. So before booking, I compared itineraries using Google Flights’ emissions estimates, chose the lower-carbon economy option, and calculated the remainder on atmosfair.de, offsetting through Gold Standard-certified clean cookstove projects rather than cheap, unverifiable credits.
But sustainability in Saudi Arabia is not an abstraction; it is the national question. This is a country of 35 million people with almost no renewable freshwater, where desalination burns enormous energy to make the tap run — a live case study in SDG 6 (Clean Water) and SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy). Riyadh regularly exceeds 45°C, making SDG 13 (Climate Action) viscerally local. And through Vision 2030 and the Saudi Green Initiative, the Kingdom has pledged 50% renewable electricity by 2030 and ten billion trees. Whether pledge becomes practice is precisely the kind of story I want to report. I track national progress against these targets on sdg-tracker.org before every pitch.
My measures on the ground are deliberately specific. Riyadh is a car city, but it no longer has to be. I will commute on the new Riyadh Metro, one of the world’s largest driverless networks, navigating it with the Darb transit app: my small daily vote for SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities). Because every litre of water in Riyadh carries a heavy energy cost, I’m carrying a filter bottle to break the bottled-water habit that dominates Gulf life. I’ll eat plant-based where I can understanding that sustainable travel is mostly the accumulation of sometimes unglamorous choices.
And then there is the measure only a journalist can take: amplification. During my placement I intend to pitch reported pieces on Gulf energy transition and water security — subjects I’ve already begun covering, including the ripple effects of this year’s oil shocks on Global South energy policy. One well-read article on Saudi solar reaches more people than a lifetime of my personal offsets. When I return to Glasgow for my final year, I’ll share what I’ve learned with outbound students through our study abroad office, because the most sustainable knowledge is the kind that travels without flying.
Two columns in the notebook. My job is to make the stories column long, and the carbon column honest.
Resources: Google Flights CO2 estimates · atmosfair.de · sdg-tracker.org · Darb (Riyadh Metro app) ·
