No holidays - carbon footprint

[Teacherbee85]

I've noticed recently whenever anyone posts about flying to go on holiday they tend to get jumped on by people saying it's bad for the environment.

I don't think I know any of these people in real life - everyone I know goes on holiday at least twice a year.

But on mumsnet a lot of people seem to have stopped due to environmental reasons.

If this is you, when did you make the decision? How do you deal with family and friends who so still choose to fly regularly?

Allow me to rebalance your statistics - I adore international travel and have no children.

Covid was great for this though. I work in an industry where we used to fly back and forth for meetings all the time. Now 90% of that travel has been scrapped and we connect remotely instead. Not just the team either, we run medical conferences multiple times a year and it used to be that everyone would travel from various points on the planet to physically be at the conference. Now many people attend remotely, and also some of the conferences themselves are now purely digital. Not all of them sadly as networking is still vastly better in person, but it's certainly made a huge difference which I think we'd have been decades away from without being forced into it by the pandemic.

Yeah so not massively worried about the state of the planet

If you have children you already have a bigger lifetime carbon footprint than a childfree person who goes on holiday twice a year.

I adore international travel too, however am really enjoying trips by train :) enjoy the journey as much as the stay, make it part of the holiday/adventure/experience. See so much more than when you just fly straight over everything. Doesn't work every time of course, sometimes time is precious, but nice sometimes.

Another non-flyer here.

In my modest circle, more environmentally-friendly travel is the norm and the ‘must have’ two holidays abroad every year seem a thing of the past. I don’t know anyone who does this anymore.

If you do fly abroad purely for the hot weather, don’t worry, it’ll be like it here before too long ☀️

This isn't a criticism of you in the slightest @Doingmybest12 but just wanted to point out that as the highest fuel consumption is during takeoff and landing, domestic and short-haul flights emit more carbon per mile than long-haul.

So for people who currently fly a lot (that's not you I know) who want to reduce their carbon output but still have the option of flying, it can be better to do a long-haul flight every few years rather than a short-haul flight every year.

Obviously the total carbon produced by a flight (rather than per mile) does depend on how far that long-haul flight is. There's a big difference between 9 hours to Florida and 20+ hours to Australia...

I agree, Perplexed - travel at ground level is a nicer, more relaxing experience. And you get much more of a feel for the country. Fly to Hong Kong, for example, and you see Hong Kong. Take the train right through China and you see all the different geographical and climate zones, the change between rice areas and tea areas, the amazing mountains and giant bamboo forests of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. And meet people in a way that's impossible in a plane.

I suppose in theory you could get to Japan overland!

Tricky at the moment because of Russia, but I've done it.

I bet that was incredible!! <3 I'm mostly scratching my travel itch with books on the topic these days. Tuk Tuk to the Road is a great one for a flight free adventure.

I don't know that one. Thanks for the recommendation.

Given up flying because it is so tedious and uncomfortable. I remember when you got decent service,they had plenty of staff and a comfortable reclineable seat even in ordinary section.

It makes me wonder about how to make a difference. A few shells and bombs overnight on Ukraine cancels everything my family attempts in 10 years.

It's all performative lies. If they can browbeat somebody online else into foregoing a holiday, it offsets their own secret travel. Remember that anybody can claim anything on here.

I don't fly.

I'm also kinda poor.

Environmental reasons makes my failure sound like a merit

We haven't flown for years, due to environmental concerns. We'll probably fly in the future but want to be mindful about it and only do so rarely when it's somewhere we really want to go (no more random city breaks just because there are cheap flights available).

We have one friend who is similar. We also have family who fly constantly, I mean up to several times a month. I try to keep my gob shut!

This isn't a new way of thinking - I remember feeling bad about flying for my honeymoon nearly 15 years ago and looking into carbon offsetting options.

And yes, before anyone jumps on me, we did save up for an electric car, air source heat pump to replace our oil boiler, we are veganish. We are far from "perfect" but trying to do our bit as I'm genuinely worried about the future for our DC. But I also studied climate change as part of my MSc so probably have a greater awareness than average.

It’s just a mumsnet thing. Dh is a pilot so we fly very regularly. If the major contributors of CO2 suddenly made a u turn and made an effort to reduce levels I certainly would follow suit.

But my flight to Vienna for the weekend on a commercial airliner (with empty seats) pales in comparison to yachts, private planes, the agricultural industry etc.

If that makes me a hypocrite I’m fine with that.

I'm quite new to mumsnet, and not new to the idea of avoiding flying due to the environment. I live in a very liberal area and a lot of people are prone to thinking greenly.

On the flip side my brother is a pilot, usually for private customers. Within his circle flying regularly is totally normal.

Would suggest therefore it's a lot to do with who is around you and what your everyday normal is. However completely agree with you that if the big shot influencers, contributors, companies etc made it a priority then it would become a movement rather than just down to personal preference and opinion.

Also...empty seats perhaps because more people are opting not to fly? Or can't afford to with the COL. Maybe not entirely, but more than likely the reason behind some!

The environmental and ethical concerns around tourism are obviously a bonus but the main reason for us is cost, for a family of 4 it could cost hundreds of pounds to go abroad and we don't have that spare. I think it's been 10 years since we flew anywhere. I don't really know people who take a lot of foreign holidays in real life.

In my case: 0.

Although I'm more of a reduced flier rather than a no flier.

I'm very worried about my carbon footprint and we follow a three year cycle for holidays. We do have them.

We rotate between holiday in the UK, holiday in Europe by train/drive/ferry and then holiday in Europe with a return flight. (This is over a period of 3 years).

We had flights in 2016, flights in 2022 and flights in 2023 (because there was a 6 year gap I figured 2 years in a row would be ok). We aren't holidaying this year and are looking at ferry/train options for next year.

That's a nice way of doing it :)

I try and see everything in moderation, as I'm not sure I believe in reincarnation and would like to enjoy my time. So, we're in our house probably every 3rd Christmas, and when we're home we have a real tree. We eat meat when we're out if we want to but are veggie at home, we look for everything second hand first before buying new, then try and buy local/sustainably, and only if that's not possible and we can't live without it will we buy something new with a large carbon footprint.

Think I'm going to take your three year cycle idea forward to DH as a good option for us. To be fair we couldn't afford to fly more often than every 3 or 4 years anyway. But I would like to do some really epic trips with the kids whilst they're under 18. We're open to the kids having an input in the final locations depending on their interests as they get older, but I know a safari is high on my list, as well as Japan, New Zealand and Canada. We're saving with the hope to do 2 or 3 'big holidays' in the next 10-15 years. Feels like an okay compromise to still enjoy my one ride on this planet whilst trying to be mindful that I'm not the last generation who need to live here!

I hope no one on this thread who is a no flyer / low flyer is a swiftie.

vm.tiktok.com/ZGen74UdF/

Her carbon footprint is wild, especially as she's one for being one with the environment and nature.

@perplexedandbemused

The stats state that flights are at their highest demand, with 200 million more flyers since covid. There are about 8k flights in the sky at anytime, sometimes more.

this subtopic has been covered on the thread already :)

Makes sense as a population continues to grow I s'pose. Sad, but can see how that would be the case.