Getty
This year, over 4 billion passengers will get on an airplane. Whether it’s for business or pleasure, air travel is responsible for nearly 3% of all global carbon emissions – and this is expected to grow at a rate of 3.5% per year.
So you care about the environment and do your part, but would you be willing to give up traveling?
That’s what a group of European “flight shamers” are hoping for as they highlight the effects of air travel on climate change. And some avid travelers are willing to make the sacrifice.
Now, in a surprise move, even one airline is on board. Today, Business Insider reported on Dutch airline KLM’s decision to launch a new "Fly Responsibly" campaign with a video on YouTube.
The video asks “Do you remember your first flight?” But the nostalgia is short-lived once they point out that their own “100 years of aviation comes with great responsibility.” In an effort to protect the planet for the next generation, KLM says they’re working “day and night” to change aviation to become more planet-friendly.
After instructing customers to “fly more responsibly” they ask “do you always need to meet face to face?,” and “Could you take the train instead?” Encouraging flyers to contribute to carbon offset funds and pack light, they close by encouraging travelers to help make one another aware of our “shared responsibility.”
As someone who has seen climate scientists themselves all-too-happy to get on a plane to attend a conference instead of Skyping in, I’m curious to see how frequent travelers who also consider themselves knowledgeable about environmental issues will react to the “flight shaming” movement. And as someone who travels by plane half a dozen times per year, it certainly has me thinking about the necessity of business trips as well as what I pack when I do travel (I do not currently travel “light”).
But the truth is, we’ve always been encouraged to travel. And as populations become more diverse, being exposed to other people and other cultures has been a great way to open people’s eyes to the rest of the world and encourage tolerance.
Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky, who has authored studies on the benefits of international travel, has said:
“Foreign experiences increase both cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought, the ability to make deep connections between disparate forms…The key, critical process is multicultural engagement, immersion and adaptation.”
It’s no different from Mark Twain’s proclamation that travel is “fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
Not only that, but vacations improve mental health.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to fly.
The larger airline industry announced a global Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) last month through the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization hoping to cap CO2 emissions from air travel at 2020 levels (while still somehow accommodating more travelers). In the event that we can’t cut carbon emissions, the hope is that we can at least become carbon neutral and generate money for other carbon reduction initiatives.
We’re lightyears away from electric or even hybrid air vehicles that can carry Airbus-ses of people across the ocean though.
As journalist Michael Goldstein pointed out in Forbes just last month, airlines have been tackling the flight-shaming movement coming out of northern Europe in a piecemeal fashion – extra fees to pay for offset emissions and ending on-board duty-free sales to reduce the weight of aircrafts (I’ll let you guess which one people found more acceptable). But he asks, quite rightly, whether this has much of an impact.
For those of us who have never considered getting on a plane to be unethical, we’re about to get a wake-up call. For many, it will be hard to take seriously until environmentalists themselves stop booking airline tickets.
In the meantime, we can think about alternate ways of traveling, closer destinations, lighter packing, and yes, even Skyping into some of those business meetings and conferences. But we should all be ready for the more serious ethical discussion headed our way.
