The long-distance (travel) love affair
Holidays abroad are incompatible with saving the climate, expert says.
YOU work hard all year and to make up for it you treat yourself to a holiday far away: sounds pretty logical right?
Not so, says sustainability expert Felix Ekardt, a German professor of law and philosophy who is one of a growing number of people voicing their criticism of long-distance, and air travel.
In an interview he explains what exactly our experiences abroad mean to us and what they have to do with the climate problem.
Ekardt: Not for me personally, I always holiday locally, but I’m sure it will be for a lot of people. Longdistance travel is seen as a real event. But at the same time, air travel is ecologically the biggest disaster that an individual can cause.
It’s the climate in particular that suffers, including the devastating consequences of climate change for ecosystems and species diversity.
In addition to that, there’s also noise pollution and air pollution, which can have deadly consequences for other people.
What does it say about our lives if this rather short-term loss of ability to travel abroad upsets us so much?
Ekardt: Astonishingly, it’s often the more environmentalist types who are the biggest air travellers, because those who are educated and interested in politics are often also more cosmopolitan and relatively wealthy.
But if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C, as set out in the Paris Agreement, emissions in all sectors – transport, electricity, heating, plastics, agriculture – will have to sink to zero in two decades maximum.
Aside from a transformation in technology, that’s also going to mean new ways of living.
You said once that many people in Western countries believe that experiences are the most important things in life. So not being able to travel much at the moment, is that a big problem for Western folks?
Ekardt: We’re all floating through an enormous universe on a little ball, and by all means you can ask yourself: where will I actually be getting out of bed tomorrow?
And why am I stressing about work when all the exciting projects that we dedicate ourselves to so passionately actually don’t serve any purpose when looked at in the cold light of day?
The old answers – for God, for the Mother Country, for the leader – are manifestly old. What could better legitimise all our hard work and our strange doings than an exciting trip far away?
Is travelling really all about new and exciting experiences then?
Ekardt: That’s the only thing that makes the decision to take
Want to experience snow for the first time in a country far, far away? Well, it’s probably a good idea to wait a while longer.
trips that are objectively not particularly comfortable – in suffocatingly hot climates, with bad food or uncomfortable hotels – understandable.
In 1994 I worked in Israel for three months. But did I become a different person through this supposed experience? Do I really know the country now?
Not really. And that applies to short trips and touristic travelling even more so.
From your point of view, what would be a healthy reason to travel?
Ekardt: Taking a sabbatical once or twice in your life, perhaps on an overland route, to really see the world, can be much more impressive than all the travel stress that we cause ourselves nowadays.
Experiences aren’t everything and they’re by no means only to be had by travelling. You won’t get rid of the lack of meaning in your post-religious life by wandering through Tierra del Fuego (South America) or Bangkok (Thailand).
And in terms of international understanding, we (Europeans) can begin in Europe itself.
Apart from that, the range of good food, cultural hotspots and pluralistic ways of living on offer in Europe are practically unrivalled by the rest of the world – and you can get there without flying.
Travelling locally would be better for the environment. But lots of holidaymakers don’t seem to care about that. Why not?
Ekardt: Behavioural research has long shown that knowledge and our own values only have a limited influence on our behaviour, despite all the education out there about the environment.
On top of that come cold hard calculations about our own self-interest and emotions: comfort, habit, repression or simply the difficulty of imagining those killed by climate change just as I’m getting on a plane to my dream destination.
We’re all stuck in the normative notions of a fossil-fuel driven world, of which air travel is a part. –dpa
Felix Ekardt is a lawyer, philosopher and sociologist. He is director of the Research Unit Sustainability and Climate Policy in Leipzig and a professor at the University of Rostock.