Dan Castrigano, a former teacher who now runs a climate organization in Burlington, Vermont, says he has always enjoyed traveling, but eventually began to worry about his carbon footprint.
He first tried to buy carbon offsets. In the end, however, he decided to simply stop flying altogether.
Why we wrote it
A small but growing number of people have given up flying due to climate problems. What supposedly surprised them is the joy they took out of the way.
“There was cognitive dissonance when I flew,” he says. “I taught about the climate of seventh and eighth graders and I was a little ashamed that I was going on holiday to Europe.”
As more and more people realize the impact of the aviation industry on the climate, and more and more people are interested in reducing their carbon footprint, a new ethos of “slow” climate-friendly travel is emerging. And those at the forefront of this movement – travelers like Mr Castrigano, who have pledged to be “no flying” for a year or more – claim that their new approach from the trip here to there is surprisingly amusing.
Waking up in a bed train at sunrise in Indiana on the way to Chicago is better than fighting the crowds at O’Hare International Airport, says Mr Castrigano.
“It’s extremely happy not to fly,” he says. “It’s liberating.”
The last time Jack Hansen flew was an junior at the University of Vermont. To return from a semester abroad in Copenhagen, he arrived from Denmark, stopped in Iceland and landed in New York.
But the next semester, one of his professors asked students to calculate their individual energy consumption. And when Mr. Hansen calculated that, he realized that only one stage of this international flight represented more energy and more greenhouse gas emissions than all the other things he had done that year – driving, heating, lighting and eating. and everything else.
He was startled.
Why we wrote it
A small but growing number of people have given up flying due to climate problems. What supposedly surprised them is the joy they took out of the way.
“I just couldn’t justify it,” he says. “It’s really extreme. It’s an extreme amount of energy, an extreme amount of pollution.”
So Mr. Hansen decided to stop flying. That was in 2015. Since then, he has traveled by train, bicycle and car and even wrote a song about trying to get home to Chicago by night bus. However, he was not on the plane.
And he never considered traveling happier, he says.
He knows that some will find it difficult to believe – including many friends and family. They look at a two-day land trip from Burlington, Vermont to Chicago, compare it to 2.5 hours in the air, and conclude that Mr. Hansen’s approach is ridiculous.
But as more and more people realize the impact of the aviation industry on the climate, and more and more people are interested in reducing their carbon footprint, a new ethos of “slow” environmentally friendly travel is taking place. And those at the forefront of this movement – travelers like Mr Hansen, who have pledged to be “no flying” for a year or more – claim that their new approach to getting here and there is surprisingly amusing.
“The motivation is initially the issue, but once you try it, you think, ‘Why did I torture myself?’ says Anna Hughes, head of Flight Free UK, a UK-based group that has collected around 10,000 promises from people that they will avoid flying. “Flights are too fast and a little fake. Your air falls from one place to another. “
Go slower, he says, and travel begins to return to what it once was: a slow metamorphosis from one place to another, a sense of space, the unfolding of time.
“If you try this way of traveling, you’ll understand what it’s all about,” he says.
“The other side is something positive”
However, psychologists say that satisfaction with travel by land is much more fundamental. A growing body of research increasingly combines environmentally friendly and climate-friendly behavior with a personal sense of well-being. In a recent article on Environmental Research Letters, for example, author Stephanie Johnson Zawadzki of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands explored the stereotype that living in the environment is about sacrifice. She found a number of studies that show that people not only felt better when they took simple “green” steps – for example, chose a paper bag in a grocery store or bought a “sustainable” product – but also experienced a better sense of well-being. when these activities required more giving.
“Despite the potential inconveniences, costs, or inconveniences that are sometimes associated with pro-environmental behaviors, people seem to consistently associate pro-environmental behaviors with positive feelings, not negative ones,” she wrote.
Psychologists speculate that part of this is that taking action to combat global warming is helping to address “climate suffering,” an increasingly recognized psychological phenomenon.
Climatic difficulties, explains psychologist Wendy Greenspun of New York, “ranges from emotional reactions from sadness to despair to sadness to anger and rage, hope and shame and guilt.” And one of the key ways to build resilience to it, he says, is to act as part of the solution and connect creatively with others who do the same.
“Guilt may lead us to realize that we care and that we want to fix it,” he says. “Anger can often be a fuel for action and not be helpless. Sadness or feelings of loss can lead to love. There is something about negative or distressed emotions for me – the other side is something positive. “
Travel with joy – and justice – in mind
This certainly applied to Dan Castrigan.
A former teacher who now runs a climate organization in Burlington, Vermont, says he has feared flying for years. At first, he tried to reduce his guilt by buying carbon offsets. (A compensation system is basically an accounting mechanism in which individuals or organizations pay to keep carbon out of the atmosphere in one place to counteract their emissions elsewhere.) However, he knew that many climate activists questioned the true value of compensation and he didn’t do it. feel much better.
“There was cognitive dissonance when I flew,” he says. “I taught about the climate of seventh and eighth graders and I was a little ashamed that I was going on holiday to Europe.”
In the end, he decided to give up flying altogether. He now helps operate Flight Free USA, which brings together people who are committed to avoiding planes for a month, a year or indefinitely.
“It’s extremely happy not to fly,” he says. “It’s liberating.”
According to researchers, the aviation sector is responsible for about 2.5% of the world’s carbon emissions. The greater impact of overall global warming is when scientists consider the heating effect of aircraft condensation trails – those temporary, linear clouds created by a stream of exhaust gases from an aircraft.
In a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published this month, scientists noted that although land vehicles still cause most of the transport-related emissions, there are ways to stabilize or reduce these greenhouse gases. Emissions from the aviation sector, on the other hand, are growing and do not have an easy solution.
This is partly due to the fact that there is still no real alternative to aviation fuel. While biofuels, electric planes and green hydrogen engines are at the center of research and speculation, the only way to currently reduce the climate impact of the aviation industry is to either fly less or use offsets.
“We did a lot of things by default”
And more and more people are worried about it – even as the aviation industry grows.
Concept shame flight – the Swedish word, which is usually translated as “flight disgrace” – is common in Europe; Climate activist Greta Thunberg helped popularize the term as she traveled across the Atlantic on a racing yacht to avoid traveling by plane to a 2019 conference in New York City. In the same year, a study commissioned by the World Economic Forum said one in seven global consumers said they would choose a lower-carbon mode of transport if they could, even if it was less convenient or more expensive. And a recent report from the McKinsey advisory group cited growing customer concerns about sustainability as one of the biggest challenges facing the aviation sector.
Meanwhile, more organizations, newly accustomed to virtual meetings, are reviewing their business trips to reduce their carbon footprint, says Shengyin Xu, head of the Global Sustainability Initiative for the World Resources Institute.
“There are just a lot of things we did by default,” he says. “Historically, when we were invited to speak at the conference, we went to book a ticket.”
The aviation industry itself is well aware of these climate concerns. It has committed itself to becoming “carbon neutral” by 2050, mainly through carbon offsets. However, climate activists are skeptical.
“You can’t get out of this,” says Mrs. Hughes. “As an individual, there is nothing you can do in your life to increase your emissions as quickly and as high as your flight. I could drive a car all year and that would be the same as a flight from London to New York on a passenger. It’s crazy how much fossil fuel is needed to get something so heavy into the air and go that far. “
There is also a justice component, she and other activists say.
A growing body of research shows that the world’s richest countries and individuals emit extremely disproportionate amounts of greenhouse gases that warm the atmosphere. For example, research by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environmental Institute in 2020 found that the richest 10% of the world’s population is responsible for 52% of the world’s cumulative greenhouse gas emissions; the richest 1% were responsible for 15%.
This is reflected in air transport.
Although it is difficult to obtain accurate statistics, most research shows that about 80% of the world’s population will never travel by plane. A 2018 study by Sweden’s Linnaeus University found that only 11% of the world’s population had graduated in that year. Meanwhile, pilots, who make up 1% of the world’s population, have often accounted for half of the aviation industry’s carbon emissions.
That is why Mr Hansen feels so good that he stays on the ground.
“I want to live in a way that I know that if everyone on earth lived like me, the world would be fine,” he says. “When it comes to individual lifestyle behavior, that’s the basis for me.”
Besides, if he flew, he would never have a story about when his girlfriend’s bike burst a tire in rural Vermont and how a stranger helped them and became a new friend. He wouldn’t watch the sun rise over Indiana from the train’s sleeping car.
And he certainly wouldn’t have those lyrics about a night bus to Chicago.