No holidays - carbon footprint

I agree, Perplexed - travel at ground level is a nicer, more relaxing experience. And you get much more of a feel for the country. Fly to Hong Kong, for example, and you see Hong Kong. Take the train right through China and you see all the different geographical and climate zones, the change between rice areas and tea areas, the amazing mountains and giant bamboo forests of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. And meet people in a way that's impossible in a plane.

I suppose in theory you could get to Japan overland!

Tricky at the moment because of Russia, but I've done it.

This isn't a criticism of you in the slightest @Doingmybest12 but just wanted to point out that as the highest fuel consumption is during takeoff and landing, domestic and short-haul flights emit more carbon per mile than long-haul.

So for people who currently fly a lot (that's not you I know) who want to reduce their carbon output but still have the option of flying, it can be better to do a long-haul flight every few years rather than a short-haul flight every year.

Obviously the total carbon produced by a flight (rather than per mile) does depend on how far that long-haul flight is. There's a big difference between 9 hours to Florida and 20+ hours to Australia...

Another non-flyer here.

In my modest circle, more environmentally-friendly travel is the norm and the ‘must have’ two holidays abroad every year seem a thing of the past. I don’t know anyone who does this anymore.

If you do fly abroad purely for the hot weather, don’t worry, it’ll be like it here before too long ☀️

I adore international travel too, however am really enjoying trips by train :) enjoy the journey as much as the stay, make it part of the holiday/adventure/experience. See so much more than when you just fly straight over everything. Doesn't work every time of course, sometimes time is precious, but nice sometimes.

If you have children you already have a bigger lifetime carbon footprint than a childfree person who goes on holiday twice a year.

Yeah so not massively worried about the state of the planet

Covid was great for this though. I work in an industry where we used to fly back and forth for meetings all the time. Now 90% of that travel has been scrapped and we connect remotely instead. Not just the team either, we run medical conferences multiple times a year and it used to be that everyone would travel from various points on the planet to physically be at the conference. Now many people attend remotely, and also some of the conferences themselves are now purely digital. Not all of them sadly as networking is still vastly better in person, but it's certainly made a huge difference which I think we'd have been decades away from without being forced into it by the pandemic.

Allow me to rebalance your statistics - I adore international travel and have no children.

True. But if everyone did it (including the super rich on their transcontinental flights in search of cheesecake) then it would free up some capacity for everyone else to do some leisure travel twice a decade or something.

I personally last flew for a holiday in 2019...hmm, well, that was a wedding in a holiday location. So actually I last flew totally off my own back for leisure purposes in 2017. I don't think I really started actively thinking about avoiding flying for environmental reasons till about 2019, and since then I've not done it for leisure. Kinda hoping that next year I might be able to go and visit family in Asia, which would definitely involve a flight.

"I don't think I know any of these people in real life - everyone I know goes on holiday at least twice a year."

Bully for you. There's a COL crisis affecting a lot of people but nice to know your lot aren't affected.

This post is just a reminder that not everyone lives like you.

We have done one short haul flight in the last decade, but are doing America next year.

Money, fear of flying and environmental damage are equal reasons for the lack of flying- it’s easy to avoid flying if you are terrified of it anyway, it always seems silly to spend the money on something you hate!

Ds is now at an age where he wants to go to places though, so we will probably do one return flight every other year. That feels like a good balance of all priorities to us.

So therefore it is no big deal for you to not fly. What do you do to help the environment that DOES inconvenience you/matter to you?

I think business travel is a big issue - people say they want to be ethical and fly somewhere for a meeting that they could have easily done on Teams. Maybe it's not quite as good, but it does work and is way better for the climate!

My DD and I took the train to visit Glasgow earlier this year rather than fly as so many suggested. It was comfortable and scenic

I've done that too, or got the train there and flown back. Even doing that cuts your emissions in half. I like Eurostar as well but it is so unreliable.

Yes private jets are the biggest problem.

@DramaLlamaBangBang it's actually 2.5%, and car travel is four times that. However vapour trails and other pollutants add up too.
The fact remains that much less than 10% of the world's population fly. Even UK and US less than half the population fly in any given year. But it's increasing. Efficiency in the industry is improving by 1% a year, but flights are increasing by 6%.
Trains and coaches are much more environmentally friendly, but it's not always possible to take several days to train it across the US for example, rather than a six hour flight. But maybe that short flight to Brussels or Paris could be avoided (after all getting to the airport, waiting once there etc and it's almost the same amount of time as the train). My DD and I took the train to visit Glasgow earlier this year rather than fly as so many suggested. It was comfortable and scenic.

There is a lot to see in the UK, and it's easy enough to get to Ireland and continental Europe by ferry or train, so you don't need to fly to have a massive range of places open to you. It's different if you want to go somewhere like Japan or the US of course. I suppose in theory you could get to Japan overland!

Absolutely agree.

All of this “there’s nothing we can do” stuff is just rubbish.

If you do all you suggest, though, it has to include a LOT less flying or it’s pointless.

its all very well and good us giving up our holidays for environmental reasons but what good is that when the very wealthy take private plane trips numerous times a month/ year
I mean one of the Kardashian’s sent a private plane across America ( and back presumably ) to fetch a cheesecake !!

@Teacherbee85 I don't think I know any of these people in real life - everyone I know goes on holiday at least twice a year.

Two flights a year is a lot from my point of view! Nobody I know flies that often. I've not flown since 2018. Each to their own I suppose, but that's not the norm!

In my circle the majority have two children. A couple have three, a couple have one, but the norm is two.

@JennyBeanR @Arghgerroffyabastard really though what the world needs is everyone doing all of those things as much as they can.

If everyone stopped buying fast fashion the majority of the time, avoided goods with a huge carbon footprint like those manufactured in china and Bangladesh, ate meat once a week, bought from their local producer, ate seasonally, flew less, considered where they travelled and therefore to whom they offered their money, voted with the environment in mind blah blah then it would be far more impactful than 1 in 10 people boycotting flying.

I do wonder how many kids these "no fliers" have.

Oh that is an interesting article. I wonder how effective carbon offsetting is though? Is it just planting trees? What about the others? I wonder how many others are held to account? They won't be generating as much for the economy. Prince William flying between London and Norfolk won't be generating anything for the economy. He could get there by train in 90 minutes and he's hardly overworked.I think we need to have a frequent flyer levy, or flying credits rather than demonising people who fly on one 2 week package holiday a year. If the super rich want to fly more, they can buy credits from someone who doesn't want to fly or they have to invest in green energy.

Not flying is one of the most impactful things you can do that you actually have direct control over.

Most co2 emissions are a kind of “fixed cost” that you can’t control. Cement, steel, shipping of things like manufactured goods, oil, etc. You can boycott and buy local, sure, but unless everybody does it too then it doesn’t help much.

One long haul flight can add 25% to your personal annual co2. It’s about the worst thing you can do, climate-wise. The reason aviation is 2.5% of global emissions is that hardly anybody in the world does it.

The UK is 1% of global emissions, sure, but one of the worst per-capita countries. There is no way that we in the west will manage to persuade the developing world to invest in low-emissions technologies as they grow unless we are on top of our game. In fact, right now China is the world leader in renewables and cutting emissions per unit of production - we need to up our game, not them.

if you fly more than once every three years, then you’re a climate denier.