Thinking about visiting family in Europe, I recently shared again how conflicted I feel about flying. The responses varied from arguing that people like me already do enough to lower their carbon footprint so it’s OK to fly to suggesting that I should simply offset my flights. And then of course there were various versions of the argument that individual action is mostly futile and that it’s not my responsibility but that of governments and companies.

I do believe individual action is important, not just for the (relatively minor) impact of the action itself, but as a starting point for raising public awareness which, over time, hopefully contributes to a change in policy. On a more selfish level, challenging myself to make some ethical changes gives me a sense of agency in the face of a demoralising future outlook.

Beyond simply acknowledging that flying is the single most carbon-intensive activity the average person can engage in, some practical things we can do to reduce our footprint include: flying as directly as possible and in economy class, taking fewer trips and staying longer/making the best use of our time there, and of course opting for trains/buses when possible. From what I researched, airline offsetting programs are somewhere between minimally effective (their complexity makes impact difficult to measure) all the way to harmful (suggesting that negative impacts can easily be cancelled out is a marketing trick to keep us flying carefree). In reality offsets mostly defer the problem. Personally, I never offset with airlines but instead give a generous amount to local climate advocacy and conservation groups when I do fly.

This somewhat light-hearted article argues that visiting loved ones is perhaps the most important (if not the only) reason we should get on a plane:

“The whole reason you and I (...) are fighting to save our planet from an incendiary future is that we want to preserve the things that matter, right? At the end of the day, nothing matters more than our relationships with the people whom we love and who love us. I want to live in a world where most people don’t have a car, where most long-distance travel happens via high-speed train — and where people still get on commercial airliners every once in a while to reconnect with faraway family and friends.”

– Kai

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Global insect biomass is falling at exactly the same rate that global GDP is growing. Turns out GDP is an accidental indicator of how quickly we are unraveling the web of life. Perhaps we should replace GDP with insect biomass as our primary indicator of progress.

– @jasonhickel