Today I booked two airline trips. One to visit family at Christmas, the other to play board games for nine days after Christmas. Both of these are going to be good and happy times, though admittedly the second one has me more pumped.
I always feel a strong sense of guilt and shame around flying. It is, environmentally speaking, not a thing I can easily justify. I know that there are many things I do right in terms of environmental impact, but when I fly twice a year it is hard to think much of my convictions. There are many things we can do to reduce the impact of our activies, like running our electric grid off of nuclear power and using electric vehicles.
Flying though? That is going to be a mess for a damn long time as I don't know of anything that can effectively replace fossil fuels for that purpose, and public ground transit to get where I am going would be hideous. My options just aren't there.
One of my great struggles with this sort of thing is when I have to examine tradeoffs. Awhile ago I wanted to travel to Ottawa, and the train was going to be $350. I could fly for far less than that, and I could borrow a car and travel for less than a quarter of the price. Taking a vehicle for a trip that had a good mass transit option frustrated the hell out of me, but I couldn't justify paying hundreds of dollars to be more environmentally friendly. It didn't help that the train normally costs $110, but I had only left 3 weeks ahead to book it, and they decided it was time to squeeze me.
This time it was different - direct flights, which are the least bad, were going to run me $700+. However, I could take a series of flights through multiple airports and get the price down to $400. It costs more fuel, takes more time, and saves me a couple hundred dollars, so I went for it.
Often, I think, when I fuss about flying people assume it is worries about crashing (not at all), or the cost (not really the thing). I don't want to crash, and I will hunt for the best deal, but really I take the risk and pay the price without much fuss. The pollution though, that is the thing that haunts me.
That, and the worry about missing my flight. I don't worry about dying in a fiery crash, no, I worry about being the person who feels like an idiot because his plane left just minutes before he arrived.
My priorities may need work.
Have you considered buying carbon offsets for the flights?
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I travel a lot (especially for someone who does not travel for work), and I do struggle with this. I don't know whether or not it's better because my financial support of the aviation industry is minimal (I effectively get my tickets at an obscene discount, but it's still ultimately a price set by the airlines and I presume they know what they're doing). Most of my air travel is to take my kids to see their grandparents, and I can't feel bad about that (or I can't live far from them), but certainly some is not.
ReplyDeleteNot sure why I'm showing up as 'Unknown'. This is slewinter.
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