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?

Thing is if flights were a lot more expensive what would happen to families where relatives are in different countries in the world??

It's costing us a staggering £3500 just for the flights to go to Zimbabwe to see DH's family for just 2 weeks - we don't know when we'll next travel out there. If airfares were increased dramitically DH could well be cut off from 99.99% of his family for the rest of his life - as I can't see we'd ever have the money (if flights were a lot more expensive that this) to go. Even if we did find the money it could take years.

BUT - just to make sure you don't think we're being totally selfish - DH is seriously considering 'green' car options (he has to have a car for his job) and even green heating/lighting possibilites for the home).

that was why I thought a tariff would be fairer and it is the huge rise in unneccessary luxury supernumerary flights which is making the big difference

how many people do you know that are taking 4 or or more flights in a year just because they can because they are cheap?

One fot eh problems with air travel is so much of it is for business use.

I am actively looking at holiday destinations in Europe using the train (we are fortunate in being 20 mins from Eurostar terminal so can easily travel to Europe that way).

We have a choice about how / where we holiday but DH has little choice about flying over to Barcelona every 2-3 weeks

Especially when teh cost to his company is so low (flights for £20 return quite often).

Agree on the necessity of flights - there would have to be some sort of concession for people with close family abroad but any system would be open to abuse. God how cynical I have become.

Frayed knot - but isn't that part of the problem? the fact that a company is willing to fly someone everyweek for a job? I am happy for your DH's job but our greenhouse is a lot about culture, isn't?

I mean, look at me, why is me and DH in a different continent than our families? Is because we can.... I believe 30 years ago, we would have never considered being this far away from the family....

Same thing with food isn't? I grew up eating pretty boring stuff and thought was fine. However, once I discovered all kind of great food from the world, I developed ataste for exotic stuff. Thing is they are everywhere! So, i end up buying mangoes from pakistan in a regular basis because they are soo good and are there in the corner green grocer all the time!

I unfortunately think there has to be some serious political decision to curb people's habits (like me!).

Dh and I were talking about government issuing carbon credit cards (so someone get so many a year to use...) and we thought. HUmm... we better move to my or his home country, or we will never see the family. Will we do that until the credit card are issued... Don't think so....

don't large companies have to do an environmental audit including flights? If not they should

lots of flights aren't necessary as there are alternatives to face to face meetings unless you physically need to be in a place eg to set soemthing up or examine a place seeing people face to face is a luxury

also they could make fewer trips with better efficiency a lot of the time

perhaps people shouldn't be rewarded for flying a lot with frequent flier perks and air miles

Testosterone - are you actually saying that you won't change your habits until you have to?

This is the same gang of superstitous fools who just recently flew hundreds of people to London to discusss whether gays eternally damned ?

As for Al Gore, his rather Disneyesque view of the environment tells us more about the pitiful state of science education in the US and Britain than the real problems.
Gore was in thrall to the Kennedy faction who hate nuclear energy and join with the Republicans to "support" US farming which does vastly more harm than SUVs, and air travel put together.

Although we haven't gone beyond the tipping point, it's pretty clear that the momentum of our society is such that even banning all flights of all kinds and every car in America won't make that much diffrence simply because of the increased wealth and consumption of China, India et al will swallow that and be hungry for more.

It's going to be bad, but fortunately we're starting the process to build hard core energy like nuclear so Britain won't be as badly affected as the madder end of nations like Germany who find themselves at the "mercy" of Russia's Gazprom and the mad as mad thing Greens in their so called government.

We're going to lose some coastline, and fools with different superstitons in places like Bangladesh are going to realise that Darwin and Malthus had a point. But too late.

Ironically of course, there won't be a Florida as such for all that long, but that's not the scary thing. The problem is that the models have all sorts of "SciFi" output. It is in the nature of numerical analysis that all sorts of mad results come out, and the trick is to drop them in the bin. But to do that you have to know what a really mad result is, and we don't. We could end up with serious changes in temperature, and there's a whole pile of mechanisms which allow for outgassing of green house gases from where they may (or may not) be current sequestrated. Screw with thr numbers a bit, and turn off the part of your brain that's listened too much to the BBC, and you get a whole pile of really scary scenarios.

So DC please clarify for me do you think something needs to be done or not?

Callisto - I am saying that I change a lot of things and am concious about my decisions, but I would be a hypocrite if I didn't realize that there are much bigger changes that needs addressing.

For example, where I grew up 32C was a cool day! My DD, and DH is hysterical in a car at 28C... They grew up in a culture where for me not to turn the car AC on would be cruel....

Same with jobs... I could have a much less high flying job, and probably spend much less carbon... Or I could walk into work everyday, but that would mean even less time at work or with the kids. i could have a total different job, or no job if our economy was setup differently, or if retirement benefits worked out differently. However, given our culture it would be a really hard thing to do. If I am to do these these really big sacrifices (e.g family, work quality, etc) I want/need everybody else to do too, otherwise is just worthless.

Did anyone read this - 100º - get used to it in The Observer yesterday? By 2050, so my ds will be 53, dd will be 47 and I will probably be dead but how terrifying that they will have to deal with this.

'If I am to do these these really big sacrifices (e.g family, work quality, etc) I want/need everybody else to do too, otherwise is just worthless.'

And so where do we start? When your next door neighbour trades in her suv for a smart? When your work colleague goes on holiday in britain rather that abroad four times a year? Or when even more of our native wildlife get on to the critical list because we are screwing up our environment at such a rate? And when most of the planet is uninhabitable will you comfort yourself with the fact that you did nothing, but then nor did the bloke down the road so that's ok? In my far less high-flying world my daughter's future is far more important than having the air-con going in my car.

Yes I quite agree FOT / Zippi - they are hopelessly disorganised so meetings often get changed / cancelled / don;t co-incide meaning more frequent trips. He could go on Eurostar if it was for a week at a time with lots of meeting planned but often has to do short hops instead for 1 night several weeks in a row.

It is a luxury and fuelled by the lower cost of flights, too.

I questioned couldn;t they use video conferencing more but they insist on sending him in person.

large American corp, they don;t give a sh*t basically.

perhaps we need to make all new builds have more accommodation underground..I did read that article and was quite astonished at the picture of Hyde park it looked like a desert..whether that was exacerbated by lightening it up or the print process I don't know

carbon neutral flights

Zippi, I thought the Hyde Park picture was an artist's impression but no, it was real.

wow my initial reaction was that it was a future projection..this could be the city park in fifty years time and then I concluded it probably wasn't

I don't fly- but dh does sometimes but that carbon neutral thing is excellent. You type in where you are flying from and to, and it gives you something you can buy to make up for it. So for flying from UK to Ireland dh could buy £3.20 of natural woodland.

Cool.

perhaps people who work for large companies should bring up the subject of carbon/neutral schemes surely some organisations would be open to them

yes, but at an individual level you can do something cheaply as well- by using that website thingy. I'm going to read through it later it looks good.

We had a twister here last week by the way (in our garden).

But ... if everyone does the carbon neutral thing... just where are ALL these trees going to go?! Or are they just going to be chopped down again in a few years when we run out of space making the whole process meaningless?

You dopn't have to by trees you can put your money into projects abroad, or into future energy development (wind farms etc). Have a look, it's cool.

But the whole point of carbon neutral is that by some process you remove the carbon you just put into the atmosphere by your flight - i.e. only by trees. I see the benefit of more money going to wind farm projects, and overseas projects, but it is NOT true carbon neutral living. I see it being in danger of being used (not by you, JimJams - just in general terms) as a cure-all sop to conscience - a way to avoid looking at the issue in depth.

On the flip side of the coin, I do tend to ignore a lot of the scientific projections, as all of them are (to a certain point) conjecture. We really don't have the knowledge or the technology yet to make accurate predictions. Of course, damage is being done, and as much as possible should be done to reduce/prevent that. But I'm also avoiding the more scare-mongery predictions the media keep producing - more interested in the worst case scenario scary headline to sell more papers than good science.

if we waited until there was a total scientific consensus on timing then it would be too late..I think a rise in sea level of 50cm when parts of asia are only three metres above sea level is terrifying