DOES MY CARBON FOOTPRINT MATTER?
How can I justify flying when climate change is killing people right now?
The concept of personal carbon footprint, we’re told, was invented by those in the fossil fuel industry as a way to deflect blame away from themselves by making individual citizens feel guilty.
There’s no doubt that action at an individual level has negligible impact on global GHG emissions. In the fight to stabilise the global climate, any real progress will have to be made at the national or at least corporate level.
So why shouldn’t I book a flight to Bali, a skiing holiday in Switzerland, a family trip to Disneyland, or a cruise ship to Antarctica?
The reality is that the global climate crisis is both urgent and an existential threat. People are dying right now as a direct result of global heating, many more are having their livelihoods ruined, and biodiversity is suffering badly. Those trends are accelerating.
We know that governments around the globe are failing to act effectively; politicians only respond to serious and sustained public pressure, and in any case are susceptible to lobbying from powerful vested interests.
If we want to break the toxic spiral of political cowardice and public complacency we have to up our game.
In reality, defeatism is moral failure. It’s nothing more than disguised selfishness.
The distinction between personal, corporate and government responsibility is utterly artificial: we either take responsibility and show leadership — or we don’t. A tendency to duck personal responsibility is a classic example of the tragedy of the commons. Defeatism (“It’s all too big, nothing I do matters”; “The plane will still fly whether I’m on it or not”) is beguilingly seductive — it’s a wonderful excuse to do nothing. In reality, defeatism is moral failure. It’s nothing more than disguised selfishness. If every individual who said ‘there’s nothing any one person can do” actually DID something, imagine what we could achieve!
I joined the climate movement in 2013. To start with, our campaigns were against corporate interests — the fossil fuel industry, the banks that enable them, and other damaging industries such as industrial dairying. Although I soon started to feel uneasy about my own GHG footprint, it took until 2018 for me to pledge no more flying holidays plus a serious cut in fossil-fuelled car trips. It was a tough call, as all my relatives live in the wrong hemisphere, and I love travel.
One return flight New Zealand — Europe burns through 7 tonnes of CO2 per economy passenger.
Only the most affluent 10% or so of humans has the option of flying or taking long holiday road-trips. Here in New Zealand our annual per capita GHG footprint is around 7.7 tonnes CO2e — roughly three times what it needs to be if we want our kids to inherit a liveable future climate (and that 7.7 tonnes does not include our national GHG emissions from animal agriculture). On top of that, one return flight New Zealand — Europe burns through another 7 tonnes of CO2 per economy passenger. That alone is three years’ worth of my allowable GHG footprint. It’s morally indefensible.
If we … are going to criticise the GHG emissions of hard-working dairy farmers, coal miners or the trucking industry, then we’d better make damn sure we are doing our personal bit first.
Climate activists are natural targets for accusations of hypocrisy. These accusations can be hard to refute, as our entire lifestyle is to some extent embedded in the way our cities, regions and nations are designed. We may find ourselves working in industries that are inherently unsustainable, and we have to commute to work or school.
But discretionary GHG emissions are another story entirely. If we activists are going to criticise the GHG emissions of hard-working dairy farmers, coal miners or the trucking industry, then we’d better make damn sure we are doing our personal bit first. Not only does this defuse the hypocrisy argument, it should stand as a beacon of hope for others to follow.
There will be no effective political action until a clear majority of the public pushes for it. Repeat polling shows that a majority of citizens across the globe are concerned about climate disruption. But that concern is not translating into action, either personally or politically. Not yet.
If we want a viable future climate, we need to break out of the current toxic spiral of public complacency and political cowardice.
How about tech solutions? Options such as carbon capture, biofuels, livestock methane reduction, nuclear fusion, and improvements in battery technology and photovoltaics need to be investigated. But their adoption at scale will simply be too little too late.
We face the mounting economic cost of climate breakdown via a global escalation in wildfires, cyclones and floods; also the reality that heatwaves are starting to make parts of the globe unliveable. But beyond those direct impacts, the reality is that the global economy is based not on finance but on energy. We’ve used up the most accessible (i.e. cheapest) fossil fuels; falling energy return on investment (EROI) alone means that Homo sapiens has entered an irreversible post-prosperity phase. We are about to get poorer.
…choosing to seriously cut all forms of fossil-fuelled travel — particularly flying — is a litmus test of our sincerity.
There is no easy solution to the climate crisis. Solving it will be costly (although it will be many times less costly than failure). A low-carbon, low-impact economy will inevitably require significant sacrifice from the affluent among us — those who can afford holiday travel.
The only sustainable flight is the one you don’t take. Climate disruption is killing people right now. Therefore choosing to seriously cut all forms of fossil-fuelled travel - particularly flying - is a litmus test of our sincerity, our integrity, and our willingness to make tough ethical choices.
