To ask you to stop flying

[Walkingthere]

We are facing a climate disaster. Our children will have to live through it. And yet I overheard two women today discussing how many holidays abroad they had been on this year. Both over 60 years of age. Obviously it will not directly impact on them.
This is also very common in my social group, people jetting off 4-5 times a year. Mini-breaks, weekends away, European trips, long haul, hen do's, weddings, birthdays. It's unbelievable how much people are burying their heads in the sand.

We need to stop flying. Urgently. Now. My family have not flown in over 5 years. We used to travel a lot, before we realised the consequences. I am putting this here, to make people think, we all need to urgently reduce (ideally stop) flying now.

ImpracticalCape I am not trying to be a dick. But how can you live off grid and be posting on the internet?

Errrrrr.... most modern mobile phones and many tablets have the ability to connect to the internet.

At our totally "off-grid" holiday place we use a 4G router.

Off grid but posting on MN. This thread is fully of oxy morons.

You want to look carefully at your household meat/water consumption,how many kids you've knocked out&whether you buy local&how you livw day to day..the hideous thing for me is what no-one wants to talk about..overpopulation&reducing bumbers why the fuck in this day&age people are still having3/4+ kids ??

ErichVonStalheim is there one that shows you how many cars are making pointless journeys, with one person in?

I doubt it. Give it time though. It won't be long before all our car journeys are monitored and we are billed for road use depending on distance, location, time of day and car occupancy etc.

Because that's all they can do. It's what happens when you don't have an identity and a career and a sense of independence. It also means you have lots of time to worry about non issues.

why the fuck in this day&age people are still having3/4+ kids

Culture? I was talking to somebody the other day about birthday presents and she told me the she had 47 nephews and nieces with more on the way.

I struggle to summon up the required enthusiasm when a third pregnancy gleefully announced.

All those self-righteous people delivering sanctimonious lectures and virtue signalling- do you honestly think this is the way to get people to change their ways?

*I don't fly or have a car, I walk or bike everywhere

the fact I can't afford either a holiday or a car is probably the main reason*
@Sobeyondthehills Snap! That's me too.

The tragedy of the commons

^why your approach will never work. My law and anthropology degree has made me a bit of an expert armchair anthropologist

why the fuck in this day&age people are still having3/4+ kids

When you’ve got megafamilies like the Radfords popping out a new kid every year and being held up by the media as some sort of pinnacle of wholesome family values, why do you expect your average family to stop at 2?

@onioncrumble why is it an oxymoron? We aren't Spartans you know?! I live somewhere with no mains utilities, I don't totally cut myself off from the outside world because I have no access to piped water!

What we acgtually need to do is work on reducing inequality, rather than whining for regulations and/or noisy virtue signalling behaviours which just make the lives of poorer people even harder. A healthy vegan diet, for instance, is expensive in terms of both money and carbon footprint, when you live in a city-centre tower block on a low income. You can't grow your own veg when you have no garden; you can't fit solar panels when you rent a flat.
Proper redistributive taxation and addressing the excess powers of the super-rich (the majority of whom are opposed to renewable energies and addressing climate change) would be of more use, as would breaking the power of religions as much as possible: empowering women is a hugely positive thing as women with autonomy, free of superstition-based misogyny, tend to have far fewer children, for one thing. And some of the money raised by proper taxation should be invested in renewable energy and research into various ways to repair the environment: there are initiatives in rewilding and reforesting, etc.

Attaching this link - It is American but demonstrates well the difference between flying and driving, only possibly is you travelling to Europe though.... The most shocking thing in the whole piece is that they consider fuel efficiency to be 25-30 miles to the gallon .

www.thoughtco.com/flying-driving-which-better-for-environment-1203936

As an aside, I hate flying, and can't wait until I can finally persuade the family I am no longer getting on a plane. I don't mind driving to Europe, but flying I can easily do without.

Here's an idea...why not live in the same country as your family if you WANT to see them so very much? Let me guess...you don't WANT to move, you don't WANT to have to change job, you don't WANT any minor inconvenience in your life...and fuck the planet.

We tried, Australia didn't grant us a visa.

Those saying that no one needs to fly - what about those on islands or rural communities?

There are places in the UK where you have to fly or take a 6 hour ferry trip to get to a hospital. If you are in labour or have a serious health issue you are going to go via plane so you can get help quicker.

While many people also chose to go on other flights for holidays etc. To say no one ever needs to fly shows a lack of understanding of the geography and services available.

You might choose not to fly but what about the food and goods you buy?
Beans from Kenya, strawberries from Spain and Portugal, lentils from Canada or Australia, your dfs sofa from somewhere in Eastern Europe and your billy bookcases and horde of other crap from ikea. Planes don’t just carry people.

As for funerals? Why would anyone travel half the way around the world to NOT be able to see someone? That makes so little sense to me I can't even begin to argue the case.

To hug my half sisters after their mum died. They needed me emotionally. Me and my brother were the only family attending.

You can't grow your own veg when you have no garden; you can't fit solar panels when you rent a flat.

That’s an interesting idea, but housing everybody in house with a garden is not cost efficient or environmentally friendly. It takes up a lot of space, it’s more difficult to heat and so on. Also, many people living in houses don’t want to grow their vegetables and instead concrete their gardens for more parking space.

What we could do is provide more allotment spaces, instead of concreting over our cities, so anyone who wants can really grow whatever they want.

Solar batteries can be fitted in new build blocks of flats.

Sadly, I think the attitude of many of the posters on this thread is representative of the general population therefore truly, we and our children are fucked.

We have committed to 1 holiday per year which we may fly for (but I am trying to find a route without flying). IF we do fly we will go with the best company for carbon offsetting.

Also gave up our car and meat and dairy.

We live in a capitalist world which is driven by consumerism - if enough people change their habits, change will happen. But do what you can manage of course.

There is a book 'How bad are bananas' which looks at the carbon footprint of each activity which is really helpful and has some surprising info. Asparagus = bad. Cloth nappies = not as good as you'd think!

YABU. I have family abroad. we all could just walk I guess...

I completely agree, MumUndone

One of these is a picture of the consequence of a hobby everyone berates, the other the consequence of a hobby everyone thinks is perfectly acceptable.

business flights for things that could be done remotely

This