The total income and expenditure of the Climate Train were both just over 100,000 US Dollars. If this seems like a lot of money to take a group of 36 people to Kyoto, we must remember that this project was much more than a journey: we organised three unique climate conferences and many other meetings on the route, the journey itself was a moving conference bringing together people of 14 nationalities, we generated publicity for the media worldwide, and we conducted research and distributed publications to raise awareness about climate change and sustainable travel. This figure also includes food and accomodation for all participants whilst on the Climate Train and in Kyoto - for up to six weeks.

Considering all this it may seem like very good value. However it was only possible to organise this project within such a tight budget thanks to the immense contribution of voluntary work from many people, and also many donations in kind. Therefore the value of these contributions is also estimated seperately at the end of this chapter.

This includes both grants raised by individual participants specifically to cover their own travel costs, and also any expenses paid by the company or organisation which they represented. Michelle Valentine received grants of 163 USD from the UEA Travel and Expeditions fund and 130 USD from the Phillip Reckit Trust. Part of Oras Tynkynnen’ s travel costs were paid by the Finnish government as part of his "Civil Service". Ben Matthews’ travel costs between the UK and Qingdao Ocean University in China were paid by a grant from the Royal Society for a joint research project investigating air-sea CO₂ fluxes. Marina Shvangiradze’s travel between Moscow and Tbilisi was paid by the Georgian National Climate Focal Point, and David Maignon’s return journey Moscow-Paris was paid by CAN France. Part of Sun Yu and Wolfgang Pomrehn’s costs were paid by China Environmental News and Neues Deutschland respectively for journalism work during the COP. Dushka Peric’s travel to and from Moscow was paid by Croatian Railways.

These were calculated by adding up the total travel costs (tickets, visas, accommodation, food, etc.) for each participant and subtracting from this his or her "subsidy" from the main Climate Train funds and his or her personal grant income. These subsidies were 100% for most participants from Eastern Europe, Russia and China (i.e. they did not make a personal contribution) wheras the subsidies were low for most participants from Western Europe. Since the actual cost of tickets was slightly higher than anticipated, even those who paid SGR for their tickets in advance received a slight subsidy. Personal contributions include train tickets bought by participants between their home and Moscow at the beginning and end of the journey (if not refunded), and also include food expenditure by those who did not receive an allowance

Note: Funding from Netherlands Environment Ministry (VROM): We also hope to receive a grant from VROM but at the time of going to press this is still uncertain: for more details please refer to the note at the end of this chapter.

We are extremely grateful for many donations in kind, whose total value we estimated as 17456 USD, subdivided as shown in the pie-chart (top right). Equipment included a handheld computer loaned by Psion, a satellite telephone loaned by Inmarsat, various computers loaned by participants, and computer consumables. Communication includes the free use of the satellite telephone calls provided by Inmarsat (estimated at 2000 USD), telephone, email and fax of our colleagues in Japan and Beijing, and the email discussion list provided by the University of East Anglia (sending a total of about 100,000 emails). Conference buildings were provided by Solarpolis (Berlin), the Polish Ecological Club (Warsaw), The Social Ecological Union (Moscow), and the Novosibirsk city government. Free local transport was provided by the COP3 Local support committee (Kyoto city transport cards and various tours -estimated value 2760 USD) and the Cool Earth Campaign and Eco-Relay project (bicycles -we only paid a very small hire charge). Office facilities were provided by the University of East Anglia, Scientists for Global Responsibility (well beyond period covered by overheads), Greencity Europe, ISAR Siberia, and the Cool Earth Campaign who let us use their office next to our temple in Kyoto. Food in Novosibirsk was provided by the city government and Siberian accord, as well as the host families. Food in Japan was provided by Cool Earth Action Kobe, the Eco Relay project, ASEED Japan, and many well wishers in Kyoto who brought for us local specialities, home produced vegetables, Japanese teas etc.. Accomodation in Japan was provided by the families of Genki temporary village Kobe, Nigawa Catholic Church Student Council, and by the people in Kyoto who made donations to help run the Kenso-zen-in Temple (33 of us stayed there for 12 nights - estimated value 3168 USD)

The Climate Train could not have happened without an enormous amount of voluntary work by many people. Assuming a rate of 400USD per person per week (full time) we estimate the total value of this voluntary work as 42080 USD, subdivided by tasks in the pie-chart and by people in the table below. These numbers are only guesses to give an idea of the scale of the work, and they are probably an underestimation. Many others not included in the table also contributed in various ways. None of the participants were paid for their time actually on the Climate Train, nor is this included in the table or piechart. At the same rate per week as above this would be an additional 82971.43USD (based on 1452 person-days).

The chart below brings together the figures presented in the budget, the schedule, and Dietrich Brockhagen’s ecobalance calculations, showing the cost (red line), time (green line) and CO₂ emissions (blue line) per passenger- kilometre. It is clear that the cost of travelling by train in Western Europe is much higher per kilometre than in Eastern Europe, Russia and even Japan, wheras the emissions are highest in Poland due to the use of coal to produce electricity to power the train. Note that for the budget "Central Europe" was taken to be Warsaw, and the CO₂ emissions from the ferry are slightly higher than in the ecobalance following our conversation with the captain of the ship. The time in Western Europe would have been considerably less on daytime trains, and the time changing wheels and waiting at the border (7 hours in Zabaikalsk!) has been excluded.

When discussing at the meeting of the subsidiary bodies to the Climate Covention in Bonn (July 97) whether to give us a grant for the Climate Train, Jörgen Henningsen, the head of the Global Environment directorate of the European Commission DGXI, said that he liked our idea but it was a pity that the journey across Siberia would take so long - the European Union is trying to promote modern high-speed rail links as an alternative to air travel. However, it is in India, China, and Russia that trains are still the mass people-movers, because there, although they are slower, they are also much cheaper (as the graph shows).

Apparently only about 20% of the price of an airline ticket is fuel, which is one reason why we cannot reduce emissions effectively just by imposing a tax on aircraft fuel. The fuel cost per passenger kilometre must be much lower for trains than aircraft, and it should be similar in all countries. Therefore the much higher train ticket prices in Europe must be caused by some other factors, probably the main cost is for salaries as railways are quite labour-intensive. This also explains why so many half-empty trains move about Western Europe, it has become cheaper to always push the same long train than to add or remove wagons according to demand as we often observed on the Russian railways. Running empty trains is not environmentally friendly. There is a simple solution to this, which green parties have been advocating for decades - to shift the tax burden away from people’s time and provision of services and place it instead on consumption of resources and pollution.