What About Flying?

An interesting line of thought, thanks.

Yeah, relative numbers can be deceptive. But they are important. For example, if you looked at the absolute numbers of car trips in China, you might get some scary numbers, compared to the number of car trips in NZ. Should we seek to reduce car usage in China but not NZ? Yet the per capita emissions of an average Chinese person is tiny relative to a citizen in NZ.

This is an interesting and thoughtful piece. While I agree with most of it, let me offer a different perspective on some of your ideas.

A couple of years ago I decided not to fly again. I think this is a worthwhile personal response to peak oil and climate change, and if more people made this decision we would reduce GHG emissions and make our transport system more resilient. Prior to that, I flew an average of maybe 4 trips per year in my 40-odd years of life; now I travel less often and when I do, those trips are substituted by bus, train and ferry.

For local travel, I mostly cycle, but also bus, ride-share and take the car. I would like our household to be car-free, but other household members want the car, so I travel as a passenger when the car is going my way. For a few medium and longer distance trips if the family is going we will take the car, with usually 4-5 passengers, often 100km journeys to visit family. If I am traveling alone or organising the trip myself, i will go by bus and ferry. Unsurprisingly, since I decided to give up air travel I haven't been overseas, but I have considered freighter travel.

I acknowledge that in some cases, simply swapping air travel for a surface trip will not reduce GHG emissions, particularly if you swap a flight on a full aeroplane for a single occupancy car trip. However, that's not what happens in practice when you decide to fly no more. What happens in practice is that you travel less far and less often, and that more than makes up for the odd occasion when you travel on a lightly loaded bus or car.

So my own decision to forgo air travel has had a small but positive impact, and I belive similar decisions by others would too. But the changes would snowball (ie you'd have a non-linear thing going on) if a significant number of people decided to forgo air travel. The frequency of scheduled air services on particular routes would decrease, and marginal distinations would drop off the network. Air travel would become less convinient, and that would impact trips by every long-distance traveller, with people not travelling or switching modes.

On the positive side, more bus and train trips would be taken, resulting in opportunites for fuller busses, more scheduled services and cheaper services. There are problems with the current services, particularly the infrequency, low loadings, and expense of train travel. So again, an increase in usage will bring network benefits that will advantage all travellers using these modes.

If our aim is to reduce GHG emissions, then certainly effective, practical policy changes to reduce and eliminate nett emissions will be better than a few people deciding not to fly. But this of course is an apples to oranges comparison; while it's completely in my control to decide whether I fly or not, I have unfortunately misplaced my global and national policy dictation powers. Of course we can still change policy; by advocacy, by political action, by persuading our friends. But sometimes that's a hard job, a long-term one set with discouragements and setbacks. It's encouraging to do something personal that is making an immediate difference and helping us move in the right direction.

In fact, I believe it's essential that we tackle these issues on all levels; personal, local, regional and global. So we need to take political actions and weild influence as well as taking personal actions to reduce our own impact, and both are just as important.

So what is the most effective decision we can take on a personal level to reduce our own emissions? For most New Zealanders, eliminating car trips will save more than eliminating flights, sure. And we must tackle both. In the long term both areoplanes and private cars will be as rare as whale oil lamps are today. They will be in museums, and not a part of everyday life. To ease the transition, we'd all do well to start scaling back our use of them now. For many people, they'll be able to phase out air flights more quickly and easily than car use.

If I'm asked what I do about climate change, I find it easier to state "I don't fly" than "I would formulate a very logical and reasonable policy and analysis for setting a moratorium on new fossil fuel extraction, and setting a limit with future reduction on imports of oil, coal and gas," although that's very worthwhile. One thing about the personal steps and stories, is that they can be more effective at getting a message across at a heart level. If I discuss my no-fly life with some people, they may think "wow, that's extreme," it may get them to think about what the implications are for them personally if they were to consider it, they may remember it and change future decisions because of it. If I reply with a political message I'm pushing, I find that more often than not they will assign me to a stereotype they already have in mind and it will not get them thinking.

In fact the personal and political are equally important, but perhaps we need 100 personal anecdotes to each political message?

Work I've been doing lately tells me it's important to ask for what we do want, not what we don't want. So the bottom line for me, although it might be a subtle distinction, rather than asking for a moratorium on extraction or import of fossil fuels, it to ask that every technology, industry and development enhance our planet and it's ability to support human life. I say this not maybe as an easy political catchphrase, but since you are thinking about policy work, this should be an underlying principal in all policy.

Part of that also is to tell people what you _do_ want them to do, not what you don't want them to do.

So what about flying? To Susan and all who read this blog - I do have a request. I'm feeling quite uneasy about the risks we are taking with our planet. I need to continue to get basic sustanence and shelter for the rest of my life, and I have an asthetic need to do that without unduly damaging other people or species, and in a way that will allow my children and decendants to comtinue to live in a wonderful world. So could you please reconsider your transport usage to ensure that it is really enhancing our world. Remember that a train or sea journey has far less of a negative GHG impact on our climate than a flight.

What we are sadly missing from the political leadership of this and most other countries are bold targets and objectives to bring humanity into a sustainable future.

New Zealand, stretched over 1000Km from North to South clearly needs a high speed efficient electric train system for the future. Where is the initiative to plan for and build this? We could have this with a 10 year planning horizon if we really put our foot down.

With a system like this and feeder lines from the outlaying towns to the backbone, flying could indeed be reduced significantly and the power to drive our trains would naturally come from our electricity systems which in principle could be run without fossil fuels.

If we simply reduce the availability of travel by pricing fossil fuels out of the reach of many we make fighting AGW a sacrifice of the poor. Glancing over the superyachts moored in Aucklands Viaduct harbor it is clear that the sacrifices we must make towards a sustainable future will be carried mostly by the poor people unless we tax the rich to pay for the infrastructure we need.

How about a 400% surtax on fist class air travel (in places where 5 others could sit) and a 200% surtax on business class air travel (in places where 2 others could sit) for starters and a 1000% tax on fuel going into private charter jets (the Lear Jets and the Gulf Streams and the Eurocopters....). Make those who presumably have the power to decide and plan for our future based on their position in our oligarchic pseudo democracy feel the pain foremost and first so that we get the momentum to spearhead the changes we need to make.

A world where the 99% of the masses can no longer afford personal travel might sit quite well with those who enjoy their Lear Jet vistas at present...
So lets make sure we do not end up there but that we employ the abilities and the wealth of the rich and the powerful towards making a better world for all of us!

Thank you very much Susan!

These are the kinds of thought that may start us on the path toward sustainability, but it is 100% sustainability that we must all achieve, and very soon at that, if we are to continue to maintain the climate as it is, as well as to have the levels of energy, food, transportation, plastics, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics that we currently consume due to cheap petroleum. Please find the designs that occurred to me as I struggled to relearn all the skills that we learn since birth, how to walk, speak, remember, play tennis, etc. that I lost when my heart stopped for 10 minutes as my forehead was being sutured under a general anesthetic following a car accident in Kenya in 1980. I staggered, walked and jogged more than 330 miles to regain those skills, and imagined how the cars passing me as I jogged might run when there was no more petroleum; the designs can be found at www.greenmillennium.eu
Mr. Kim Gyr
Director, Green Millennium

Our government is showing strong political leadership in transport infrastructure - they are building new highways, at a time when traffic volumes on our roads have ceased growing. It's not political leadership I would agree with, but it is political leadership. Political leadership is a tough one, I think there is a good case for politicians not to support anything unless it has the support of a large proportion of the population, eg. 75% or more. That would eliminate new motorways and asset sales, and national train systems.

Another good idea to constrain political leadership would be to require policies to be objectively beneficial in the medium term and to be evidence based. Either the government is following an ideological path and ignoring facts, or someone is providing them with false evidence to justify their road building.

I'm not worried about having a gold-plated transport system that allows us to continue to travel the length of the country, why do we need it? I know we're not going to have an extensive air travel network, but in reality it's no great loss. Why don't we just make incremental changes to our existing trains as needed?

I'm also not worried about the lear jet crowd. This is a middle class concern. The poor most probably don't give a toss whether 60% or 0.6% of people fly. I'd rather have 0.6% fly, since the GHG/climate change impact will be much improved. But the middle classes who are set to loose their travel ability may well resent the wealthy.

I'm not going to tell anybody not to fly or tell them they shouldn't. I'm only going to ask them to take care of the earth so I can meet my own needs.

Yes, we need to be clear on our objectives. Reducing income and wealth disparities is a laudable goal and I support it. Reducing GHG emissions and stabilizing our climate is a different goal even if not totally orthogonal.

Aircraft are destined for the museum.....

I think my main point was too vague.

20% of people actively and vehemently do not want to reduce fossil fuel use and in fact think it will continue to grow.
70% of people care about climate change, and worry about oil supply, but they are too busy or too ambivalent to take any kind of action.
9% of people are concerned enough to take some kind of action, like signing a petition or joining Forrest & Bird or voting Green.
1% of the people are switched on to the point of doing something. If there is to be real change of any kind - it will be the 1% who actually achieve it.

So - if you are one of the 1% who are so committed to addressing these issues that you will take some kind of action, then we all desperately need you to take an action that could cause a change. 1% of people choosing not to fly on the 2-4 times when that was an option, will not be noticed and will not reduce the number of flights or the amount of fuel used. Don't kid yourself that you are part of a movement of non-fliers because there is not a movement of non-fliers.

If 1% of the population signed a petition, funded a media project, gathered in a Rugby stadium, clicked "support" on the Transition Engineering website... And if what they wanted was clear - a moratorium on deep sea drilling and fracking and a freeze and reduction over time of the amount of oil imported into New Zealand.... Then there might be a shift of thought that could lead to change.