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?

People may have know for a while but not much has been done. Consumption and flying still increasing.

Known

We don't fly much to start with so won't be reducing. Counting up I've had 7 return journeys by plane, all within Europe, in my adult life, which works out roughly one every four years.

We do travel to Europe more regularly, probably two years out of three, but often go by ferry as I really don't like flying very much. I'm not convinced driving to Paris is any better for the environment but it's a hell of a lot more fun.

Of course people knew - I also learned about man's impact on the climate and the problem caused by the masses of Co2 being pumped into the atmosphere, as well as the other greenhouse gasses. The importance of recycling was drilled into us and we even had a 5 cent levy placed on all bottles to encourage recycling - this was in the 80s!

The real issue is not that not much has been done, it is that emissions have dramatically gotten worse and between then and now, consumer culture has exploded and expanded to the rest of the world. This thread is evidence enough that people really are selfish and can give lip service to highlight their woke credentials but are not really ready to make any kind of real sacrifice.

I definitely think I will fly less. I am super stressed about the environment and climate change and worry about my kids future very much. We already have 1 trip booked this year that I feel very guilty about. I'm thinking that might be our one and only flight until we go home next Christmas. I'm also trying hard to be more environmentally conscious in other aspects of my life although I know it sadly won't make any difference in the overall scheme of things. But I'll feel better about myself in the meantime until I can figure out how to make a difference for real.

:(

Does anyone remember the Captain Planet cartoon from their youth? I was ten when that can out, 1990. There was even a whole apocalyptic episode about the perils of having more than two kids.

My son lives a 14 hour flight away. Of course I'm going to fly to spend time with him.

Of course people knew

Same with smoking, drink driving, drugs, unprotected sex etc. People knew of the risks but are inherently selfish so just didn't care about the consequences and basically did want they wanted to do for instant gratification.

It really does need the politicians to step up to the mark and start bringing in laws etc to force people to moderate their behaviour. NOT BY TAXES as we saw that didn't work with smoking and drinking - people still did it however expensive. It needs to be made socially unacceptable, just like dog fouling, drink driving, etc. I think awareness is now high enough for some brave politicians to actually start bringing in laws/regulations - we've probably reached "critical mass" stage where most of the population would accept laws to change behaviour etc.

Also I know the cultural differences etc and visiting family aside but is New Zealand really so different to Scotland? Is the experience of being on a beach in Thailand really so different to being on one in Sardinia? It doesn’t have to be a sacrifice but think we need a shift in mindset on travel

Said by someone with options to travel, I assume?

Of course it’s different. If you live in Scotland and don’t want to fly, you can still see a shit load of amazing countries by driving or train or ferry or whatever. If you live in New Zealand and don’t want to fly, you stay in New Zealand.

I don't fly any longer. Have been on holiday by rail to Europe instead. I want to be able to tell my children I did what I could and I have had some of the best holidays ever!

People know even more now it doesn’t mean things will change rapidly. It’s all the good stuff, the marketed stuff. It takes a lot to lower over consumption.

www-cbc-ca.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5391269

Junk mail/internet storage in data centres is no joke - it's a huge issue.

No and why would I? Yes climate change is real but you know what else is very real? That plane will fly regardless of whether you get on it or not and you also get one life only. We can all do a little bit but enjoy your holidays, I will be enjoying mine 🙂

Just because you think China hasn't changed its behaviour doesn't give you an excuse not to change yours

My point, which the maths bear out, is that it doesn’t matter what anyone in the UK does, because it is a literal drop in the bucket when compared to China.

So enjoy your holiday.

China releases the equivalent of the UK’s total annual output of CO2 in just over two weeks. It really doesn’t matter what you do, or what anyone else in the UK does.

China releases 20 times emissions of the UK? Well, China has 20 times the population of the UK. And a massive amount of that is emissions "on behalf of the world": mobile devices, ipads, computers, clothes, toys etc etc. Your argument is a nonsense. What everybody does matters. Why do you 70 million people as irrelevant?

yappity if half the seats were taken compared to now do you think airlines would change the number of flights?

I fly 1-2 times a year usually. Sometimes not at all. I don't think that will change. What if family live abroad?

That plane will fly regardless of whether you get on it or not

Are you operating under the delusion that if fewer people flew that airlines would just be stubbornly flying empty planes across the sky in hope of future custom?

Per capita, we are WAY worse than China!

Of course on an overall basis China will be bigger, they have over a billion people. But we in the UK live a much more luxurious carbon-intensive lifestyle than they do. We also order loads of crap from Amazon which is manufactured there - we've essentially outsourced our polluting to them.

@BadLad

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

There was a poster up thread who came on and threw a foul mouthed, personal attack at all of us who have bred. Her post was deleted, but what I have been saying is in response to it.

Lol Four, you said it a better way

Also worth pointing out that governments do what they think voters want and companies do what they think consumers want. So the only way to get large-scale change is to make it very clear that this matters to individuals.

I would like everyone to:
Write to their MP and to Johnson, making it clear that they care about climate change.
Switch to a renewable energy supplier like Good Energy or Bulb.
Decide for themselves what lifestyle changes they're able and willing to make, make them, and then talk about making them. A big reason this is becoming more of a thing now than in the 80s is because we're social creatures and we take our cue from others. I started cutting back on flying, in part, because people I admire told me that they had, and it inspired me to do the same. We don't need everyone to make the same choices, but we need to make it socially desirable to pay attention to how and what we consume. That will be different for everyone and that's fine. But we all need to think about it.

Why do you 70 million people as irrelevant?

I don’t. I lived in China during their economic boom. I am very happy to see them climb out of poverty.

But the numbers are stark and you can’t just wave it away with a ‘but it’s per capita!’ Those are huge numbers and no amount of emission cuts from the UK are gonna make up for that. The maths are mind boggling and not on your side.

I got my head ripped off on mumsnet once before (and I'll risk saying this again) for saying that maybe people could think about reducing the number of showers they take. There seem to be a lot of people on here proudly proclaiming their need to take two (or in some cases three) showers a day in order to be clean and others who shower just once or day or, God forbid, once every two or three days are very unhygienic.

I'm not saying we should go back to the bath once a month and only if you're dirty era - but surely reducing showering a bit would also have an impact.

When it comes down to it, everyone needs to look at their lifestyle and think of ways they could reduce their carbon footprint. Flying is the most obvious one but there are plenty of other things they could do.

I have a neighbour who is quite actively promoting the principle of "halving".
He says you can't expect people to give everything up but people could half what they do.
Eg. he now takes half of his journeys by public transport here and half by car (it's difficult here to take all journeys by public transport due to very poor services). He takes a flight once every 4 years whereas it was previously every 2. He has halved the number of showers he takes! He used to eat meat every day - now it's every second day
And so on.
He says when he's done all of this for a couple of years he'll look at the situation again and see what he could reduce further.

Dh hates flying so that’s my wings clipped anyway since I met him. He is also in international recruitment and rarely leaves his office. Conference calling should be the way forward and corporations should be heavily penalised for airtravel.