Flying on holiday is a sin....................does it make you feel guilty

[zippitippitoes]

so says the Bishop of london as the church of England brings forward a plan to encourage everyone to step lighter on the planet

are you justified in flying abroad on holiday?

I do feel horribly guilty!
I am not a follower of the CofE, but was very touched by their move. They are absolutely right!
My DH would tell you I am a drama queen, but the other day while I was listening to a program on global warming I felt guilty for bringing DCs in this world which sometimes I feel is going tits up soon!

"It's much later than you think - that's the chilling message of Dr James Lovelock's work on climate change. Dr Lovelock, one of the UK's leading scientists, believes the effects of global warming will be so catastrophic, and so rapid, that they will lead to the deaths of billions of people by the end of this century."
From Radio 4 website re global warming debate.

• even worse potentially than i'd heard before - ds2 was only born last yr - can't help feeling v worried about the consequences for him and any children he should have when the hell is the governmt going to properly wake up to all this and have the guts to do something? how can they get away with being so short-termist ? come to think of it, how can the great british public still get away with this attitude too? and yes, i've been on a plane 1x this yr - now feeling more guilty than i did already. will think twice about flying next yr and will not plan anything longhaul.

We fly a lot (dh works abroad) and yes,feeling very bad about it.

Similarly,if you willfully choose a non Fairtrade product,when the option is available to you,you are also commiting a grave sin.

am I justified - well yes I am this year.

How else do I get to Zimbabwe if I don't fly??

It's a landlocked country so can't sail, and driving isn't an option - too many wars heading around the middle of Africa..........

So how else is DH supposed to see his family which he hasn't seen for 6 1/2yrs?

But I do think he's making a good point

md, except it honestly isn't is it? sometimes it seems like we're all on the titanic and it's going down..flying must be one of the worst things we can carry on doing? Not condeming you or yr family, we still fly too - just think it's time we all accepted the need to start debating this. Great that the Bishop has got some media coverage for this.

Misschief- Yes, I was on a scientific conference last week and the speaker suggested that a large percentage of species will go exting in the next 25 years dur to global warming. That is really fast!

Sorry, moondog, but at the moment I'm afaraid the carbon economy is a bit more serious and a bigger sin than the fair trade...

We don't fly at all. We plan to, when hte kids get older, fly to the US annually to see my family, as my father is experiencing increasingly poor health in his 70s and in a few years may not be able to make the journey.

But for now, there are plenty of beautiful places in Scotland, England and Wales for us to visit.

For us, flying is a nuisance w/a toddler and baby, although we do plan making a ferry journey to France next year, where some friends living in Germany will meet us.

Really Testosterone???

That's like saying violent rape is a lesser evil than murder.

Sorry, moondog, but at the moment I'm afaraid the carbon economy is a bit more serious and a bigger sin than the fair trade...

a bigger sin??? When farmers in developing countries are being forced to live in poverty even though they're growing the goods which we Western Consumers want??????

but if we're all going down? which i think i'm starting to believe ..if we've reached the point of no return on global warming, if billions will die this century then, unfortunately, fairtrade etc will become irrelevant! Better to be impoverished than dead..

oh so the 8 million (with the majority of those being children) people currently dying each year because they can't afford to live aren't important then???

by the end of this century that means that 80 million will have died from poverty - I think that makes it a pretty big issue..

I say this when people argue about road travel effects on environment...

Forget that concentrate on air travel ...the effects are horrendous

mind you if you take UNICEF's figures they reckon 10million children die each year from poverty..........

of course it's bloody important that people are dying now! Did anyone say it wasn't?
Just that if we've managed to blitz the entire world due to global warming then there won't be any of us left! in the context of this debate there is nothing more important!

In fairness, the problem of carbon emmissions being detrimental to the planet is no excuse not to buy Fairtrade products whenever you can.

yes. As missChief says if the world is unlivable, my 50 pence contribution to a farmer in Zambia will not be worth anything!

But, my real point is that the Bishop's statements are too important to be ignored.
If we sit here and discuss all the things that we should feel sinfull for doing we will just decide is too much, and will not take his words to heart.
There is something we can do, and I think we owe to our children to cut our carbon expenses, and eat organic food, and buy fair trade, and support local grtowers,etc, etc...

But right now, attention is really needed to global warming and it hasn't been.

I'm sick of supermarkets killing people by driving down the price of food. Farmers - no matter what country they are in - are real people w/real families.

We cut back in other areas so we could buy as much of our food from local sources as possible, and fair trade wherever possible.

B/c we could do it, even if it meant cutting back in other areas.

It's the least we could do for others.

Your last comment is spot on Expat (thanks for e mail btw,hugely valid and interesting points)

IMHO no one issue is more important than another, you have to look at all areas of your lifestyle, and try to make changes, even if they're only small.

Carmenere: "In fairness, the problem of carbon emmissions being detrimental to the planet is no excuse not to buy Fairtrade products whenever you can. "

I absolutely agree. But suggest people see the opposite :
because you buy faitrade products doesn't mean you should not be concerned about global warming , and not think twice whether we really need to fly as much as we all do these days...

Which I believe is the point of this thread....

let's not forget the impact of flying food around, too.

small farmers have skills that need to be maintained, b/c one of these days in the none too distant future, i have a feeling our children and grandchildren are going to need their help and knowledge, quite desperately.

I didn't say that one or the other isn't important. But I'd rather we didn't double the number of people dying in the next century by pushing global warming to the front of the list and pushing global poverty back.

It's just that I can't sit here knowing that in the time it's taken me to write this post 20 children have died of poverty without thinking it's also an extremely important thing to consider.

I see global warming as intricately linked w/increasing poverty, however.

As deserts expand, there is less land for growing food. As waters rise, again, less land for growing food, in addition, more water-borne disease and natural disasters, leaving children orphaned and dangerously exposed to predators in addition to poverty-striken.

Global warming ruins land and crops, making both land and food a more limited resource.

This, as we already know, leads to all things terrible.

I really think people have not realized how fast global warming can completely change life as we know it...
It has been more than 10 years that scientists have been warning people, but I suspect most keep thinking is something far off in the future...
From all I've been reading it will creep on us really fast. i.e. in our lifetime!

I think it's been quite easy to imagine that the time scale for environmental change is a 1000 years..but it is really just around the corner in the next 100 years in fact less