Climate change is real
There’s no escaping the absolute truth that climate change is real, caused by humans, and accelerating. Equally, there’s no escaping the reality that each and every one of us are contributing to climate change. Yes, even you (and definitely me).
You do you and I do me
Generally, I’m happy for people to be free to make their own decisions. However, some decisions are too important to leave to individuals. For example, I cannot simply decide to go be a practicing medical doctor, starting tomorrow, as I simply don’t have the training, knowledge and experience. Equally, I cannot be an airline pilot, as I don’t know how to fly a plane. For things like that, there are controls in place, to prevent someone like me deciding one day that we can do that particular job. The harm I can do to others is simply too great to leave that decision just to me.
YOUR fun isn’t worth my life
I believe the time has come to clamp down on leisure travel. Specifically, jetting off to some exotic destination, or a city break. There simply is no way to justify frivolously adding huge amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere, just for a few days in the sun. Because of that, leisure flying needs to stop.
Angry yet?
Are you angry yet? Are you shouting that I have no right to tell you what to do? Are you sure about that?
If YOUR choices impact on the likelihood of others being able to survive, then it isn’t only your decision to make anymore, now is it? We already have some measures in place to prevent harm to the public – medical doctors needing to be qualified is but one such example.
Equally, in the UK you’re not allowed to smoke indoors. This is simply to prevent your choices from harming others. Calling for flying to be stopped, or at least massively curtailed, in reality isn’t any different.
It’s time to make the pledge
What I’d like you to do is take a pledge to be flight-free this year. Find alternative ways of getting to your destination and make the journey part of the adventure. Most of Europe is accessible by train from the UK.
Go visit Flight-free UK, and make the pledge. You know it’s the right thing to do.
Great post. My future holiday plans don’t include flying. And most will be in the UK.
Never fly but it’s ridiculous that I’ll spend nearly 800 quid getting to Prague and back for a family wedding (eurostar plus night trains plus train fare to London) when a flight is £100 max.
I agree entirely. When I went cycling the bottom half of Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way, I had a similar problem, and in total spent roughly 5 times more just to to Dublin, via trains and a ferry, than I would have if I flew there instead.