AIBU to ask how many of you are seriously revising whether (or how often) you fly again?

[Thelowquietsea]

We don't fly often (one flight a year tops, mostly to Europe) but reducing my air travel is one of the few differences I can make towards climate change.

And yet, I'm celebrating a big birthday this year. I had an idea to take myself to a retreat quite far away, and now it's 'booking' time, I can't quite bring myself to do it. Especially in light of Australia's tragedy. I'm really torn.

How many of you are making serious sacrifices in this area?

Entropy yes agree with that. 3+ sounds about right too.

I don't fly often, I flew back to family before Christmas, will probably see them in the summer. I don't feel guilty, I have no choice. I do other things to combat climate change though, including giving up the car and I walk everywhere. It's inconvenient but I think saves more carbon emissions than my flying habits....

I keep track of my holidays / flights since 2009 in a page according to it I've created 24.7 tons of CO2 so 2.47 tons/year. (this includes 108 flights which 14 are long haul)
Wonder how much do people that drive to work every day create ..
Google says "A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. " which reinforce my idea that not only flying should be reduced

No, I’m not...
Planes are always going to fly..
But maybe we need to tackle efficient use of a planes capacity
It sickens me when people arrive with luggage stuffed to the brim for a sunshine holiday..often 20 kg worth , then a cabin bag and then they stagger on with a litre each of spirit or buy it on board

It should be 10 kg hold back and similar cabin bag
Spare hold space for cargo
We go to Tenerife three times a year in winter ..Tenerife needs just about everything importing..surely these planes could be topped up with the goods the need

I really think that when people say no babies should be born at all anymore in the UK, that is incredibly short sighted in terms of international relations, the economy and the survival of as many public services as we can reasonably sustain.

Has anyone said no babies should be born at all anymore in the UK?

Btw..have McDonald’s stopped putting a cheap plastic toy in the happy meals yet..I mentioned that over 20 years ago when they first landed on shores that the stupid piece of junk was a no no

We will take one flight this year. I’m not willing to sacrifice it. It’s not like I’m taking 10 and can sacrifice 2 or 3. I’m taking one only, with one of the ecologically better airlines as mentioned above.

Tbh we live in a global society now. I think the answer is to make aircraft cleaner.

It should be 10 kg hold back and similar cabin bag

Maybe ban people based on BMI too?

Btw..have McDonald’s stopped putting a cheap plastic toy in the happy meals yet.

McDonalds have announced they will be changing the toys to books within the next year.

Thinking about it and we now offset our carbon emissions not just for flights but extra to cover just about all our household emissions. The way we do that means funding places like China to switch their energy use to less polluting methods. We use this site - it's not a substitute for lifestyle change but you can help those other countries to make changes too. www.carbonfootprint.com/

We recyle everything we can and have never been into conspicuous consumption. Our next car is likely to be electric but we wont give it up yet.

If we dont ALL start making changes there will be no humans on this planet, possibly within the lifetime of my child.

I'll probably be dead before this could significantly impact on my life - if people like me who have nothing to gain can try to help what's your excuse?

thanks @alreadytaken for the link

Quote

Are those who don't intend to change doing other things? The impact of stored emails/junk mail is massive for example and all you need to do is unsubscribe to the rubbish and delete things you don't need. The "cloud" servers use massive amounts of electricity and its one of the least known causes of massive environmental damage through carbon emissions.

Good lord! I don’t think you’re joking either 😱

BTW also easyJet pays for the offset
"That’s why, for every single flight we operate, we’ll offset the carbon from the fuel used, by investing in projects that include the planting of trees or protecting against deforestation and renewable energies."

www.easyjet.com/en/sustainability

Good lord! I don’t think you’re joking either

I'm not joking. Its a massive problem that doesn't get spoken about.

On the pp planes will always fly..

Some might but if demand falls then supply will too.

We’ve just booked a train for our next holiday (to Europe). Usually we would fly.

I'm pretty sure I ready that the easyjet carbon "offsetting" is a teeny tiny proportion of what is used. So for example they offset 1% or something. I'll try to find the source

I'm pretty sure I ready that the easyjet carbon "offsetting" is a teeny tiny proportion of what is used. So for example they offset 1% or something. I'll try to find the source

Apologies I seem to have been wrong on that. Looks like they now operate net zero carbon emissions.

Norway is planning to have all internal flights in electric planes by 2040. Ambitious!
But they've looked at their carbon footprint and seen that this is a major problem. It's a vast country and driving times are extremely long. Flights are a lifeline for some of the remoter communities in the Arctic. I think the government realized it would be unrealistic to expect people to reduce the number of flights they take and looked at other alternatives.
I took an internal flight in Norway to get back to Oslo after a hike. I looked into getting the train (9 hours) or the bus (8 hours). The flight was 45 minutes. I didn't have the time for the surface travel unfortunately.

I have cut back on plane travel drastically though I am flying long haul this year. It will be the first and only time. I am visiting some lovely friends who have emigrated.

I don't really think people taking the occasional holiday or visits to family is the major problem. There are so many business meetings taking place in Europe where people fly backwards and forwards for the day or for a couple of days. There must be a better way of doing it than this.
I live in Austria and people fly from Salzburg to Vienna for the day for a meeting. The government were looking into to reducing this - the train only takes a couple of hours and would be a better alternative. With the greens getting into the coalition government I think there will be more positive environmental measures coming.

I'm a bit surprised by people saying that climate change wasn't well known about until recently. We learnt about it in geography at school and that was in the late 1980s, although they called it global warming back in olden days...

We all need to make as many changes as we personally feasibly can. Even if that means some inconvenience to us

Or we all accept that people have to do what suits them best.
I simply wont put extra stress on us if i can help it. We have enough to deal with

Surely once we realise that it’s damaging to fly, the responsible thing to do is to at least think about whether flying is necessary
Flying is cheaper for us, less stress, much easier than a 2-3 day drive to go interstate.

The impact of stored emails/junk mail is massive for example
Oh FFS this is getting ridiculous, now email storage? Whats next photos too

Of course I’ve stopped flying
Can’t believe how selfish the majority of you are
lol, nice ivory tower you have there

if people like me who have nothing to gain can try to help what's your excuse?
Simply keeping our life easy and stress free come first. Keeping my anxiety and DP PTSD in check is first and foremost We need to be functioning on a daily basis for DD
So we fly cos its cheaper and easier. Less stress on DP who also the only driver as i cant due to my anxiety. But holidays reset us and relax us so we wont stop. Or time is a factor, flying just makes sense for a quick 3 day getaway to see WWE live as they dont come to my state.

But on the whole, we do many things cos its easier, cheaper and simply less stress for us

m a bit surprised by people saying that climate change wasn't well known about until recently. We learnt about it in geography at school and that was in the late 1980s, although they called it global warming back in olden days...

Yes I find this surprising too. We learnt about this in Geography ca. 1990 and our teacher and a small group of girls including myself set up a Green Group at school. We were very active until we left in 1994. Don't know what happened afterwards but we did loads of stuff in school - encouraging paper recycling, campaigning to get all exercise books changed to recycled paper, planting trees for a local charity, banning aerosols eg. hairspray, deodorants in school (persuading people to change to roll-ons as back then the aerosols were still full of CFCs). We did assemblies on the topic as well.

This is why Greta got my back up a while back with her "How dare you" speech and "You stole our future". We were doing stuff when we were that age too - just not on a global scale.

There are so many business meetings taking place in Europe where people fly backwards and forwards for the day or for a couple of days. There must be a better way of doing it than this.

People also fly into London for work when they live slightly outside the UK for tax avoidance reasons, i.e. living in the tax havens of the Isle of Man, Channel Islands, Gibraltar, Luxembourg etc. That needs to be stopped. I seem to remember David Frost flew in from abroad every Sunday morning to do his TV show and flew out again the same day - all to avoid UK tax. Same with some sports personalities.

It's clearly crazy that it's worth people flying into the UK on an almost daily basis to avoid paying UK tax. We either need to make that more expensive to fly, or reduce UK taxes so that there's no benefit in doing so.

I'm a bit surprised by people saying that climate change wasn't well known about until recently.

I'm not just surprised, I find it loopy. I remember people were talking about climate change/global warming in the 1970s, scientists were debating it in the 1950s, and other scientists were discussing it back in the 1800s!!

I'm a bit surprised by people saying that climate change wasn't well known about until recently. We learnt about it in geography at school and that was in the late 1980s, although they called it global warming back in olden days...

Yep, same here. Lots of publicity about global warming, the environment, etc in the 80s. In fact, I vividly remember my A level English Language paper in which the major written work I did was a letter to my fictional MP about "a topic of current affairs" and I wrote about the need for better public transport to reduce car use pollution etc - that was late 80s. It must have been high on the agenda in those days as I wasn't a driver when I took the exam, so must have heard about the pollution and lack of public transport alternatives in the media nearly 40 years ago!