THE ART OF TRAVEL
The “flight-shame” movement has well and truly taken off, writes ANNA HART. But is encouraging travellers to swear off air travel really the answer?
Feel-good flying.
Do you want to know what progress feels like? Sometimes, it’s a flutter of elation, as we realise that we’re getting to do, see, hear or think something we barely dared to hope for.
This might be finally getting our heels to touch the ground in downward dog, or watching historically polarised world leaders shaking hands on TV. But, just as often, progress feels less pleasant. Sometimes, it’s a pang of shame, as we realise we’re slightly horrified by something we were cheerfully doing six months or a few years ago. This might be a discriminatory joke we used to make, or it might be the developed world’s collective disregard for climate change.
In some cases, shame is a sign of social progress, indicating we’re better people than we used to be. Uncomfortable as it is, we should learn to revel in this particular flavour of shame, rather than suppressing the sensation. We should be telling friends and family about the dull ethical ache in our bellies, and asking if they feel that sting of social advancement, too.
Right now, the shame I’m stewing in (along with many other avid travellers around the globe) concerns air travel. It seems mere months ago that Instagram was brimming with snaps of passports and boarding passes artfully arranged next to matcha lattes and Smythson document wallets, as influencers and celebrities jostled to prove how “jet set” they were. Today, the Flygskam, or “flight-shaming”, movement popularised by climate activist Greta Thunberg and Olympic medallist Björn Ferry, has made excessive air travel seem about as socially acceptable and groovy as smoking indoors while blaring R Kelly tunes, slurping cola through a plastic throwaway straw and loudly praising Harvey Weinstein’s eye for new talent.
Coldplay, who recently released their eighth studio album, announced they were taking a break from touring until they could find a more “sustainable” way to do so. “We’re taking time over the next year or two to work out how can, not only our tour be sustainable, but how can it be actively beneficial,” said relentlessly right-on singer Chris Martin.
I know that, to some minds, all this collective hand-wringing about carbon emissions will seem showy and insincere, but I’m all for it. Whoever said “fake it ’till you make it” might not have been thinking about human decency, but if you pretend to be a good person hard enough, one morning you will wake up a good person. When it comes to air travel, progress has well and truly been made, and every travel obsessive I know is wondering how we can continue to see and experience the world without destroying it.
But I’m not adding my voice to those calling upon travellers to take a “flight-free pledge” and ground ourselves entirely. Swearing off air travel for life is a noble stance, but
one that most people will consider infeasible and a tad alienating. If you have family or friends far away, if you trade internationally, if you are an artist, doctor, aid worker, scientist, performer or academic, or simply if you count travel as one of your greatest passions, going flight-free may well seem prohibitively detrimental and potentially damaging to your life and the lives of others. And at this stage, we really can’t risk losing people to defeatism – that poison to progress. But if a majority of people make moderate improvements to their carbon footprint, this will have a much greater net impact than a marginal group adopting an extreme position.
Most of us would be willing to admit we’ve become too casual about air travel. And this “why not?” attitude to flying is exactly what was intended by the low-cost carriers that landed on the scene about 15 years ago. For nearly two decades, budget airlines have tirelessly marketed the idea that the only consequence of taking frequent short-haul flights is fewer dollars in the bank. Now, humanity is once again in the unenviable position of having to relinquish its current, comfortable mindset and adjust to a new, less convenient one, even though it’s not a new mindset at all; it’s the one we had 20 years ago, which we now realise was right, after all. Just as we’ve hauled organic-farming methods back from the recesses of history, so, too, we’re having to reinstate our healthy respect for air travel. Because sometimes, progress means going back to the way things used to be.
What I’m resolving to do, in 2020, is to simply treat air travel with the respect it deserves. To regard every flight as a privilege, to travel more mindfully, to ensure that every single flight I take really counts. This means I still get to visit my family in California and Ireland, and I still get one or two life-changing flights to explore new and exotic locations, perhaps Bolivia or Vanuatu. It also means embracing rail travel in Europe and America, packing a good book to see me through the 16-hour train journey from London to Austria this month. On my 52-hour Amtrak trip between Los Angeles and New Orleans in April, perhaps I’ll write a damn book. Looking at the year ahead, my aim is to get my flight count down to less than five round-trips annually. I know that, to some people, this will already seem excessive, but the amount we fly varies enormously from person to person, based on their individual circumstances: their professional field, the whereabouts of their loved ones and, to a lesser extent, their hobbies and passions.
People travel differently for various reasons, and it’s up to everyone to feel that pang of flight shame and make the adjustment that seems sane and sustainable to them – and find a way of flying that feels good to them. Because sustainability, well, it needs to be sustainable.