„There is no longer any doubt that we need to reduce the number of flights we take to help tackle climate change – and make any trip we do go on count…“
„In the Netherlands they say vliegschaamte; the Swedes say flygskam; and the Germans Flugscham. The words all mean “fly shame”, or the guilt that travellers experience when they fly off somewhere knowing they are contributing to climate change. In contrast, the British have little or no flight shame. We take 70 million flights a year, our aviation industry is growing fast and our government wants more runways (pdf ) for even more flights, scuppering any chance of meeting global emissions targets.“
“We are seeing rapidly growing interest in compensating flight emissions,” says Kai Landwehr of Swiss NGO Myclimate, which works with Lufthansa and Swissair. “It’s still a small proportion of flights but we are finding people are happy to pay more, even up to £40 a flight.”
Others say they are applying the idea of the “flexitarian” diet – where people cut back on their meat consumption drastically but not completely – to flying. We were going away three or four times a year just because we always did,” says Sarah Jones, a marketing executive from Reading. “It was stupid. The climate thing was the last straw. We just thought, ‘this is crazy’, so now we go abroad a maximum of once a year and really look forward to it.”
This should be the bare minimum! If you insist on flying for your holidays – at least reduce it to once a year! And compensate it! (Even though already one single intercontinental flight ruins your carbon footprint, making you a „climate pig“.)
