To think soon it won’t be socially acceptable to fly

[Pigletspal]

I’m sad because I’ve been saving up for 6 years to go on holiday. I want to go to South America and Southeast Asia next year. I’ve also just got a job with a decent wage and I have been looking forward to much to making holidays a regular thing.

But they’re about to get more expensive aren’t they?

And suddenly I feel guilty about wanting to fly. One of my friends has already said that she will be going on “one last” foreign holiday and then stopping due to climate change.

And I really want to save the planet too. I’m just sad that it’s all going this way.
Am I overreacting or shall I get used to the idea my travelling days are numbered?

I think frequent flying (ie for business or to a second home or to do a mini break once a month) will be socially unacceptable.

But one holiday per year per family I’m sure will remain ok and normal. The UK doesn’t have nice enough weather to keep everyone here all the time! (I say this as someone who loves trips in the UK and burns easily so not bothered about sun bathing!)

But has there been a dramatic reduction of global warming just because planes are not flying.

I was reading a few articles on this as although most planes are grounded and air travel has reduced and traffic is so much less there really hasn’t been that much difference made.

The thing is people can point to air travel and say people shouldn’t fly.

And for most people who don’t want to go abroad or just want to go to Europe it really doesn’t impact how they live their lives

The hard thing is that something like stopping eating meat or using animal products, or stopping buying plastic imported crap or cheap clothes from Indian sweatshops or just not cooking when a salad or something cold will do or turning the heating down in winter are things that would impact lives and people will give every excuse in the book into why they can’t do any of the above but are quite happy to point their fingers at people going on holiday and blame them for all the worlds ills.

Except now people aren’t flying and it hasn’t made much of a difference

these impacting people’s lives

Wondered where that last line went

I don’t understand why people think that flying for holidays is more acceptable than business travellers either.

They are often using business or first class - both of which have a higher cost to the environment.
They are often more frequent per person.
They are often for far shorter periods of time.

It is not unusual for people to fly a few hours each way for a 1-2 hour business meeting, which could easily be done by video conferencing. Yes, its not as 'nice' as face to face, and there's less perks to it, but it can clearly be done.

The only people who claim not to go on holiday out of choice (rather than life circumstances or money) only exist on mumsnet

We have 2 or 3 holidays a year, but never fly. When we go outside the UK, we either go by train or drive.

I live in the UK, my parents live in Israel. There are no trains or boats going there, and I actually have a job, so can't take 2 months off to get there and back walking. So I will continue flying regardless of how much it costs and what other people think about it.

Aeroplanes account for about 3% of global climate emissions.

Animal agriculture accounts for 14.5% of global climate emissions. Of that, 41% is from beef alone.

If you don’t want to give up flying, give up meat instead. You’ll make more of a difference.

Maybe it should be something you need a permit for? So each adult can apply for a travel permit whenever they want to fly somewhere. Their overall airmiles total is used to check whether a permit can be issued, with a cap on airmiles over say a 5year period

I like the idea of a per capita allocation of air miles, especially if they could be traded, so people like me, who don't fly, could sell their allocation.

It might make people think twice about popping to Majorca for yet another hen weekend, or to their house in the Dordogne, if that meant they wouldn't have enough air miles left for their trip to Cancun or to their villa in St Lucia.

Rationing air miles would also apply to business travel, so all these people who fly to a meeting in Milan and then fly back the same day would have to bloody well find another way of doing it.

I live in the UK, my parents live in Israel. There are no trains or boats going there

The other day, DP and I were talking about travelling on cargo ships
so I googled it and found a company called Freighter Expeditions. They do (well, will do when Covid's no longer an issue) a passage on a ship from Italy to Israel, so you could get a train to Italy and a ship the rest of the way. I think it was you I thought of when I saw it @Acidburn, if you were on the other flying thread a few days ago.

I think that would be an amazing trip.

I love travelling, but detest airports with every shred of my being. Wherever possible, I take the car or train. I've never had any desire to explore very much of Asia or Australasia, but love taking long train journeys. Someone mentioned the Trans Siberian earlier in this thread, a journey I've done a couple of times - and the Trans Mongolian railway journey from St Petersburg to Beijing was incredible.

Maybe people will instead invest more in travelling - and travel for longer periods than the standard fortnight summer holiday? It's always baffled me why so many people love baking themselves on a sun lounger for two weeks and never see anything at all of the country or region they visit. Horses for course, obvs, but I just don't see the point at all.

Driving around Europe obviously isn't particularly eco friendly, either, but as others have said, cutting down on our use of resources in terms of plastic, meat, energy, clothing etc has a far bigger impact than curtailing our travelling.... and also has a bigger benefit to life experience.

I do, however, disagree that travel ALWAYS broadens the mind - an aunt of mine visited Venice and all she could say about it was that it was 'run down' (I shit you not). It was on the tip of my tongue to scream at her; 'It's not 'run down', you daft cow, it's BYZANTINE'! She also went to India (I can't recall which part) and said the poverty 'really ruined (her) holiday'.

I don't think flights will become socially unacceptable.

But I do think cruise liner companies days are numbered!

Noooo, have only just discovered cruising! As I said up thread I'm a non-flyer and last summer in the Med was my first holiday in the sun for 30 years. Was hoping to repeat it at some point

After sacrificing holidays and going without treats to save for a house for years we have finally got on the property ladder. We looked forward to this day so that we can start saving to take our kids on holiday and explore the world with them while they are young. I would hate it if we couldn't go on holiday again! I'm sure things will go back to normal in someway.

Hopefully business will try and let staff do more video conferences rather than sending staff to different countries weekly etc,

I mean, you can be sad about it but it's better to reduce air travel than to continue thinking wanting foreign holidays is more important than reducing environmental impact. There will always be legitimate reasons for air travel but a holiday isn't one of them IMO.

I need to carry on flying if I want to see my family. Yes I could travel by other means but it would mean using most of my actual leave for travelling there and back rather than spending it with my family. I am not willing to trade that unless I have no other choice.

Maybe in the future people will be willing to trade living in different countries to their families

It isn't really that black and white though. If you are in a relationship with someone who isn't from your home country one of you has to move. Plus the thousands of other reasons people need to relocate.

Video conferencing is actually causing a ton of problems in my industry. When travel opens up again I expect I and many others are going to flying more than ever for the first 6 months, trying to smooth things over.

and travel for longer periods than the standard fortnight summer holiday? It's always baffled me why so many people love baking themselves on a sun lounger for two weeks

you need a much bigger change for this to happen. in many companies, 2 weeks is the maximum you can take at one time during peak season, some companies don't even allow more than 1 week. It makes sense if you try to accomodate every one who wishes to take time off then.

Wow so many replies. I’m glad to see the majority think the occasional holiday will still be okay and not overly judged. I don’t have children and I am vegetarian so I suppose I am helping the planet in other ways.

I think I may have to save double the amount for my holiday when it does eventually happen though.

kmc1111 this is really interesting to me, can you describe what's happening and what needs smoothing over?

My work has transferred pretty seamlessly over to mostly videoconferences, the only thing I haven't actually done yet is manage to close a deal from start to finish over zoom with never having physically met an investor. Everyone I've closed over zoom so far I'd already met in the past, and the people who I have never yet met haven't yet closed a deal! So I'm wondering if it's just timing, or if the videoconferencing is actually delaying a decision.

I like the idea of a per capita allocation of air miles, especially if they could be traded, so people like me, who don't fly, could sell their allocation

I would love that. Especially if it could be allocated on the basis of everything else bought.
E.g. the less meat/clothes/plastic crap you buy the cheaper the air travel.

For a per-capita allowance to be environmentally effective though, it would have to be non transferrable. Quite a few people rarely or never fly (my husband is nearly 60 and has never flown in his life - I've only flown three times) so with a transferrable allowance all that would happen would be that those people would sell it on to the frequent flyers and reduction in flight levels would be minimal.

never mind the planet
1 person with covid could potentially infect the whole plane, and god knows how many more

No chance! You can care about the planet and still fly