Traveling is one of my favorite things…
Let me scratch that. It is, BY FAR, my most favorite thing about life.
So, with the ever-increasing urgency of Climate Action, it is fair to ask: how (not) sustainable is traveling, really? How adverse are these air miles that we –travel lovers – bank on each year, and sometimes just for the sake of eating an instagrammable plate on the other side of the world? I’ve been asking myself this question for a little while now… For the scientists amongst us, we estimate that one economy round trip from Montreal (Canada) to Los Angeles (USA) emits a whoping 596.4 kg of CO2 per passenger… Now, imagine that there are 199 additional people on that flight, and that about 100,000 flights like this one take off every day around the globe… That’s right, about 100,000 international flights take off every single day (present actual day excluded, amidst the coronavirus situation)… And this demand is projected to increase threefold by 2050.
Unfortunately, from what I’ve read, we are still a long way from carbon emissions-free flights – there are real technological challenges for aircrafts to be entirely electric or run on hydrogen or solar energy yet – but I digress…
The Situation we’re in, Today
Today is March 30, 2020 – and if you’ve lived through it, you will know that we are currently traversing a global viral pandemic, like nobody (alive today) has ever experienced in their lifetime. This pandemic, amongst other terrible consequences, has drastically halted our transportation activities. Early Department of transportation numbers reveal that road traffic has decreased around 30%-60% on many of the U.S. Northeastern highways. And commercial flight companies are desperate for government assistance, because the demand has virtually stopped in a matter of a few days.
Situations like these, put things in perspective.
Not only the perspective that a world with significantly fewer transportation activities and travel is truly viable – and that living and discovering areas close to home is actually quite nice. It also puts in perspective the fact that we’ve most likely exaggerated for quite a while – exaggerated our demand, our movements, our business trips, our individual travels – we’ve been living extra.
Agreed, some of these flights are taken to see family relatives living on the other side of the planet that we miss so dearly, but let’s be honest, most of these 100,000 commercial flights/day are taken for business trips and to get away from our routine for 2 weeks/year.
I am – myself – part of the problem: in the last 12 months, I’ve flown 10 times domestically for work, and I have taken an international (10-day trip to Japan). So, believe me, I’m not here to flight-shame anyone! I am simply posing a question that we might want to take the time to reflect on – as a society – and maybe tweak it a little bit in the post-corona world.
There’s a lot more we can do
Since it would be hypocritical of me to lecture anyone, I just want to take some time to raise awareness. Awareness of the fact that this flying “habit” that we have is not sustainable, at least not yet, and that we should re-train our brain somehow to see flying as what it actually is: a costly mean of transportation that we should think twice about using. Can this business meeting be hold remotely? Can we have these conversations more strategically? If I only have a week of vacation to spare – can I travel close to home instead of traveling outer sea. Rediscover my surroundings that I’ve taken for granted so bad.
And, beyond the individual spectrum, we can ask even more questions: can we tap into more local resources to optimize our supply chains? Not only for essential goods like food, but also for any “unessential” goods and services, which could lead to building more strong and resilient communities.
With that in mind, I hope you’ll keep that in mind as we navigate through the current crisis, and plan for how we’ll be structuring the rest of 2020.
Little extras
En route for an emission-free air travel? NASA is testing out a promising prototype
If you want to know how much your next flight is costing in GHG emissions, click here!