To think flying off on holidays is immoral?

[RedTriangle]

Anyone planning to fly off on holidays?

“Every round-trip ticket on flights from New York to London, keep in mind, costs the Arctic three more square meters of ice”
nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

I live near an airport and there is a steady stream of planes landing and taking off. It feels ominous now in light of the recent WWF report talking about life on earth being wiped out.

There are posts on mumsnet on the section about long haul travel where people are talking about flying off with their families to Thailand or Mexico etc not thinking or not caring about the impact! Future generations won’t be jetting off and living lives like this as we will have destroyed the planet and they will be scrambling to survive.

My parents have booked a weekend in Spain! They regularly do this and they will be long gone while future people pay a terrible price.

Actually, keeping a dog is one of the most damaging things you can do for the environment and having children is very bad news. Is that immoral too?

If I were to make a list of the top 10 immoral things going on in the world right now, air travel would not be one of them. we all do our bit to help but we also all do our bit to destroy. why do humans think that their existence on this planet is or should be any more life limited than say the Dinosaurs.

we are a species. we evolved, we increase in numbers we die out.

Bestseller. I am sure it's not environmentally great to have a dog, but I don't think it's the worst thing.

I went to Glasgow a few weekends ago. I'm broke. Train was £150. Return flight £55.
It's a no brainer.
Bring down the costs of the more environmentally friendly travel options and then we'll talk.

I read somewhere that a biggish dog (lab or similar) in the West has the same environmental footprint as a Vietnamese person.

That's not meaning to have a go at people, but I thought it was an interesting comparison.

@RedTriangle

"I know i sound sanctimonious"

That's an unfortunate side effect of being sanctimonious.

GoldenMcOldie I don't have the time (or inclination) to make cat food and I like to know he's getting exactly what he needs. The pouches aren't recyclable unfortunately.

I use a clay based clumping litter (well the cat does!) and he's happy so I don't want to risk changing it. Even if I wanted a worm farm he would make it impossible as the cat loves worms and went through a stage of bringing them indoors...

I find it isn't conincidental that OP didn't think about the impact of children before having them. And now you don't want to fly long haul but you want us all to stop and at the same time judge it as immortal.

Now isn't it odd that when people decide to take a stand on one particular point they want everyone else to do the same but brush the other stuff they do under the covers. It's as if to give their 'sacrifice' greater meaning they need to sing about and make others agree its soooo important we must all do the same

Golden, I saw some research that showed that in a family of four with a large dog and a 4x4 the biggest positive impact they could have on the environment (legally, as doing away with children is not allowed! ) would be to get rid of the dog.

I can see Santa's point. We're fucked no matter what we do. Synthetic fibres (aka plastics) are destroying the planet. But so does cotton. Cleaning chemicals destroy the planet and/or contribute towards antibiotic/bacterial resistance, using microfibre cloths and water is meant to help but every time we wash microfibre cloths, microfibres are shedding into the water supply and into the food chain.

Bring down the costs of the more environmentally friendly travel options and then we'll talk.

Or keep travel to essential travel?

Cement / concrete production is responsible for 10% of world CO2 emissions
Flying 2.5%

We clearly need to stop building too and obviously if we are going to stop building we need to stop expanding the population which would also help with those emissions from agriculture (13%) so surely the most immoral thing is having kids! But building improves the housing stock so can improve energy efficiency- things are rarely as easy & uncomplex as declaring A is the wrong path
You must do B!
Eco cement that absorbs CO2 exists but isn't widespread. Perhaps we should ban regular concrete.
Declaring things as immoral tends to switch people off. Encouragement and legislation can head us in the right direction and each taking our own steps to help and encouraging our legislators to do the same.
Embracing better ways of doing things tends to encourage sustained uptake by people.

do people know what a vegan locally sourced diet looks like in England in winter

Lord yes this would be grim

Nope. If I want to travel I will.

YANBU at all. But looking at these responses you can see why it’s so difficult to change human behaviour when it comes to the environment. Look how defensive and nasty people get. Look at the amount of abuse you’ve received. (The passive aggressive ‘get help for your anxiety OP!’ posts are hilarious/depressing.) Look at the pages upon pages of excuses and Whataboutery. You’d have got a more positive reception if you’d written a post about hating animals or children.

I live near a busy-ish road and often think the same, particularly when you wait to cross the road and see that 90% of the cars only contain the driver. What are we doing? Can all these people really not walk or take public transport? Why do we think this is fine? For one person to pump toxic gas into the atmosphere just because it’s the most convenient way for them of getting from A to B?

we are a species. we evolved, we increase in numbers we die out.

True, but we aren’t only doing harm to ourselves. We’re going to leave one hell of a mess behind when we do die out. Not like the dinosaurs. We need to clean up before we go imo.

It’s obly going to get worse as the developing countries increase thier demand for western ‘stuff’ things like chocolate and dairy supplies are aparently spread thinner as China develops a taste for it.
Everyone wants everything cheap - but that mostly means more disposable. People buy a coat now from primary that lasts a season and then is faded/misshapen/out of fashion rather than years ago people would buy a good quality coat that lasted years. People buy more processed food which results in more packaging (and the factories used to produce it) we can’t even be bothered to put our own apples in a bag now as all fruit comes in packaging - even bananas that have their own packaging! Halloween costumes are bought from a supermarket and then discarded rather than made form a cardboard box and a bit of paint and reusing things from around the house.
It’s depressing but it needs intervention at government levels to do things like ban plastic straws/intervene with industry to change thier processes - think how much cardboard would be saved just if amazon sent things in the right sized box! They would still be sending the same amount of parcels but if they had a bigger varierty of sizes they wouldn’t have to send things in boxes 5 times too big! But of course they won’t do that as it would increase costs and time take to find the right size of box.
I sometimes thing we need an old fashioned pandemic to wipe out half the worlds population to lessen the stress on the earth.

Or keep travel to essential travel?

My travel to work is essential. I work around 4 miles from home, which takes me around minutes in the car. According to the TFL journey planner public transport would take 58 minutes, 48 minutes of which is walking too and from the bus stop.

Cycling would be an option if it didn't involve either a badly lit winding road or a badly lit towpath.

Car it is then.

We're going to hell in a hand basket and I think I'd rather fiddle while Rome burns. I'm preparing DD for a life of Mad Max style post apocalyptic shenanigans. She'd love it.

Is it ironic that I’m reading this thread at 31,000ft somewhere over the Pacific? Love Air New Zealand’s on board WiFi :-)

So, what do we do?

By providing the lifestyle we think we deserve we kill the future of the very same children we provide it for. And no one is prepared to stop.

I think we need a personal carbon allowance, but it has to be planet wide and even when writing this here I realise it's naive to expect it.

So what do we do? Nothing and expect our children to pay for it?

It’s obly going to get worse as the developing countries increase thier demand for western ‘stuff'

Exactly. And difficult for Westerners to encourage others to limit their consumption when they've had free reign at the party for so long.

YANBU it's all very shit. And yes I do 'my bit' but lots of damage too, and feel pretty insignificant when it comes to it. Planet earth is doomed.

I have no children but I fly a lot for my job. Swings and roundabouts.

Nope, don't find it immoral at all. And again, the chief cause of environmental damage is over-population. The best thing you can do for the environment is refrain from reproducing, funny how that never comes up as a thread on Mumsnet.

Air travel is much more efficient and better for the environment than cars or ships per mile, why focus on the best alternative rather than the worst? And if CO2 is your issue what about the thousands of worse industries than aircraft? There are so many other areas to focus on first as many other posters have said!