Fun, flying and equity

It's ironic, but before I started working for an environmental organization professionally, I was a much better environmentalist. In my private life, that is. Especially in the way I managed to avoid the worst environmental sin any of us commit: flying.

I remember calling in to a BBC Scotland radio show expousing the virtues of travelling between Edinburgh and Germany by train, as I used to do regularly - for some years even exclusively. I argued that it is more fun and that I can't understand anyone that would travel by plane... I think of this often, as I sit bored in some airport lounge ...

I still travel a lot by train - whenever I can I do. I cover distances such as Berlin-Geneva or Berlin-Amsterdam regularly, that many think are way too far to even consider the train. I even travelled to London by train for the first time in ages this April. It was actually quite exciting to use the Eurotunnel again. I was reminded of the hilarious BBC news item on the night when it opened. The presenter managed to look straight into the camera and announce that the tunnel "ends centuries of isolation of the Continent from Britain"... I was also reminded how I got stuck in the tunnel on a nightmarish trip one christmas...

But the reality is: I fly a huge amount. Mainly for work. But not exclusively. I went to an international school. And so keeping in contact with some of my closest friends, does require me to fly. On this blog you will soon see me recounting the joys of backpacking in Canada...

And, yet, the reality is, we all know that there can be no justification for flying. If we are to share the earth resources equitably, we may just about be allowed one long-haul flight a decade. I was reminded of this yesterday, when I was discussing climate change and equity with some university students. They said "the demands of equity are unrealistic", which my gut told me I must argue against. And yet, we all find flying normal. (Even I usually avoid arguing with friends over their own 'flying habit'.) And even I, trying to argue that equity is not a pipe dream, was genuinely surprised when a student told me: "I am 25 and I have not yet been on a long-haul flight." This guy should be my hero. We need way more like him if equity is indeed supposed to be realistic. And yet, even I caught myself thinking: "That's strange" ...

Genuinely depressed I get, when even environmentalist friends tell me, that flying is a "need" that it will be impossible to make people do without. I simply am not willing to accept that. If it is possible, as a society, to convince (most) people not to murder and not to drink and drive - it must be possible for us to reduce our serial killer habit - flying. I therefore applaud my colleagues in the UK, who have decided to not accept that nothing can be done, and are offering people train tickets in exchange for domestic flights.

As so often, George Monbiot is one of the few in the environmental movement who dares to speak truth to power, to us and to himself. So let me end with a passage from his book Heat, which moved me when I read it ... most ironically on the flight back from the World Social Forum in Nairobi this January:

"A 90 per cent cut in carbon emissions means the end of distant foreign holidays, unless you are prepared to take a long time getting there. ... It means that journeys around the world must be reserved for visiting the people you love, and that they will require both slow travel and the saving up of carbon rations. It means the end of shopping trips to New York, parties in Ibiza, second homes in Tuscany, and, most painfully for me, political meetings in Porto Alegre - unless you believe that these activities are worth the sacrifice of the biosphere and the lives of the poor. But I urge you to remember that these provocations affect a tiny proportion of the world's people. The reason they seem so harsh is that this tiny proportion almost certainly includes you."