After Covid, would you give up flying to combat climate change?

[Aprilrainbow]

After a horrid year we all want a holiday but would you be prepared to give up flying to combat climate change or is that a pre covid thing now? No axe to grind, just interested in peoples views.

No.

No.
I think business travel should be targeted and not those who do their best throughout the year to to reduce their carbon footprint. I do other things but still want to go abroard. Perhaps allow everyone one return flight per year.

BefuddledPerson I agree. To really have an impact on climate change everything has to change, not just air travel. Stopping that alone would not make a significant, sustainable difference.

This year air travel has dramatically reduced, but I bet we won't see a big benefit to the environment as a result. Plus the fact that aeroplanes are still flying at all shows how necessary it is, they're not transporting thousands of people to beach holidays.

People should make informed choices on what changes they're willing to make as individuals.

@BefuddledPerson

That sounds heartless but we have to change. All of it.

Flights, consumption, driving, heating, lighting, food.

It all needs to evolve.

I don't want you to have no job. But I also don't want everything to stay like this.

And why do we have to change it all?

You don’t have any sound argument for this.

You like to talk in terms of ‘essential’ flights or ‘essential’ items but if the lockdowns have proven anything, no one can agree on what that is.

All that control over other people’s lives, and all for just under 3% of carbon emissions. Which is an absolutely meaningless amount, by the way, and won’t solve anything at all.

But it will hurt a lot of people for absolutely no gain.

'allow everyone one return flight a year'
Hahaha
Fuck off

Yes we will, and have before this. The impact on the environment choosing to fly for business, to go for a weekend away is a selfish choice. Lots of discussion regarding cars whose impact is far less than air travel.

There is something very sad about a thread with more than half stating they live in countries away from their families. Why? What's so dreadful about the places your family live in, surely you all want to maintain real relationships with your families?

@Teddy1258

'allow everyone one return flight a year' Hahaha Fuck off

Feel free to pass on your alternative suggestions. Ban all cars? Thought not.

No

@Mirrorxx

No I wouldn’t give it up. We don’t own a car, don’t eat meat, will have maximum one dc. I do think people who choose to have multiple dc or who eat beef should be prevented from flying

😂 are you for real? I shouldn't fly because I have 2 children and occasionally eat beef?!

No. I’m an expat, living alone. If I gave up flying I’d never see my family.

There is something very sad about a thread with more than half stating they live in countries away from their families. Why? What's so dreadful about the places your family live in, surely you all want to maintain real relationships with your families?

Are you for fucking real? So we should all just uproot our lives then otherwise we don't have a 'real' relationship? I don't live in the same country as my DF because he emigrated, and as a fully grown adult, I don't want to uproot my life here to live there. So i'll continue to fly, and he'll continue flying to me

People need to look at the broader context of their carbon emissions before they blame flying. If you drive 16 hours to the south of France do you know your impact vs a 2 hour flight on a new Dreamliner for e.g.? What about the ferry or the train you took?
It’s certainly not as simple as air travel is the devil.

There is something very sad about a thread with more than half stating they live in countries away from their families. Why? What's so dreadful about the places your family live in, surely you all want to maintain real relationships with your families

I am NC with my family but even if I wasn’t there is no way I would want to live in the northern town I grew up in.

I certainly won’t be giving up air travel. After this year we were supposed to be going on holiday to a couple of European destinations. We usually drive in Europe.
I was also looking to buy a place in an EU country or in the US before Covid The EU was the more sensible option but again that has been cancelled.
Now we have left the EU if I own a place in Spain I can only stay 3 months. If I own a place in the US I can stay 6 months. Given American visas are one of the hardest visas to get I think the EU are being a little harsh.

So I can see me doing more long haul trips not less.

Part of the reason why climate change affects the developing world is due to poor infrastructure. If they had up-to-date buildings and good roads, it wouldn’t actually be a big deal.

What about rising sea levels?

No, I would not make any changes to combat climate change.

No, I love travelling abroad however we only do it every 3 years or so.

There is something very sad about a thread with more than half stating they live in countries away from their families. Why? What's so dreadful about the places your family live in, surely you all want to maintain real relationships with your families

I do want to maintain a ‘real’ relationship with my family, thanks, and they and I both feel we do.

In my case, I was here short term. I fell in love with and married a person of a different nationality to me. Clearly an utterly cardinal sin. Marrying foreigners is clearly sad and despicable.

So we had to make a choice about where to live. In his country, closer to his family who had less support and were less mobile?

We lived here on the condition that we visit my homeland around once a year. Covid has clearly blown all that to shit, but there are still no ‘easy’ outcomes for us.

So yes, it’s difficult. But not ‘sad’, and I think it’s only peculiarly insular and unimaginative minds that would look at my happy, thriving family unit and their strong relationships with their extended families on two contents (stronger with mine than with their British families, in fact) and think it ‘sad’.

No

I go on a long haul flight perhaps once every 2 years. Perhaps less in future if the cost of air travel increases.

Whilst it’s extremely admirable to give up travel on an individual basis, I don’t believe it will have much impact on climate change. Big corporations need to make changes in order to drastically reduce carbon emissions. Pressure on those corporations could have far more impact than stopping personal flights.

If we have to live our lives under endless restrictions to our freedoms and hideous concepts such as carbon credits, enforced vegetarianism and one-child policies, then I hope the world hurries the fuck up and burns, because it sounds like a miserable existence anyway.

No I will not give up flying.

Lol. No. Because flying has only a very small CO2 contribution to all CO2 emissions. In addition, on any flight over 2hrs, the per passenger CO2 emissions for the distance travelled is lower than going by car, or diesel train/ship. And they have improver planes to the point that the fist zero carbon planes are rolling off the factory floor.
People just love to focus on flying as a way to combat climate change because it’s the easiest thing to stop doing. No one wants to face that fact that driving a car every day or commuting by train over an hour each way a day is a much bigger impact to CO2 emissions and climate change than their once or few times a year holiday flights.

To prevent catastrophic climate changes most people in the west will need to see changes across most aspects of their lives.

So flights, home heating, local transport, food, consumerism
You can decide there is no point in doing anything if you don't do everything all at once, but that will make things worse.

Not a chance in hell
We like to travel.
Hell, we have flown during corona just to go see a house in another state as we intending on moving there

@Ninbuscl

I can’t believe the people who are saying not a chance I love to travel. What on earth will happen if people aren’t willing to try to combat climate change.

I could trot out a few virtue-signalling platitudes about recycling, not doing pointless wasteful throwaway consumerism, not buying fast fashion etc etc. but that would be disingenuous.

The reality is that, after this year, I just don’t give a fuck about climate change. My life has been on hold for too long, and as soon as I’m vaccinated I will be flying to go on as many holidays as I can possibly fit into next year.

What on earth will happen if people aren’t willing to try to combat climate change.

The climate is going to change no matter what we do or not do. It’s an inevitable fact of life on Earth. We can’t control the climate. We should be focussed on adapting and surviving climate change, as our ancestors did. This is separate from pollution which we do need to get a grip on as we are in much greater danger of poisoning ourselves with things like microplastics than the planets climate getting too hot to live on (between now and when the sun goes super giant in a few billion years).

There is something very sad about a thread with more than half stating they live in countries away from their families. Why? What's so dreadful about the places your family live in, surely you all want to maintain real relationships with your families?

Im NC with my family but no way would i want to have stayed in the shitty area with no future.
We moving state, DP family will stay in the state we live in now. We moving cos DD future is brighter, more opportunities in the other state
We can fly back to see them, they can fly to us. No lost relationship, we already live 2 hours away from everyone