SubscribePledge to be free from flying for 12 months
Take the LowFlyZone pledge
Take the pledge because you recognise that the choices you make affect how happy you are, and work best when you feel part of nature and respect the needs and happiness of others.
Choosing to be free from air travel will help to reconnect you with the people and places around you, and is probably the single biggest step that you can take to help prevent climate change.
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June 1st, 2009 at 4:27 pm
I’d love to take the flight pledge (as I did before in 2007) but I have friends and godchildren in far-flung places and, whereas I did feel able to pledge before ‘to take no more than two short-haul flights or one long-haul flight’ a year (I always assumed that the latter would be a return flight and I wasn’t expected to remain in Africa or the USA for the next 12 months!) and whilst I’m travelling by train to holiday in Spain this month and to the Pyrenees by coach later in the summer, I simply can’t promise not to use the plane at all for leisure trips. Could you let me back in with a bronze pledge? I am trying to be eco-friendly, after all.
June 1st, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Hi Rob,
There is so far to go in terms of making the changes we need to make and what we need to be ‘normal’. In the end we are in such a calamitous global warming scenario now that it feels important to celebrate actions that really reflect the scale of change needed.
An equitable amount of CO2 for each person to emit is roughly 1 tonne per year if we are to get near addressing global warming. It only takes one return flight London to New York to create that level of pollution. With all the electricity we use, fossil fuels used in food production, transport cooking heating etc. it’s impossible to get down to a reasonable level of emissions if we fly most years. The emmissions from essential activities currently blows most peoples CO2 pollution levels way over 3 tonnes. Probably one flight every ten years will have to become normal, maybe less!
It can feel like a major sacrifice when so many others jump on planes without a thought. I have family and friends in Australia and used to work on many over-seas ecology projects through One World Wildlife, but none of that makes any sense if I am spewing huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
It’s only the last 10 or 15 years that many of us have got used to flying for a whole range of reasons. We need to adapt fast even if it feels hard to take a stand when few others are prepared to voluntarily, but that’s what this pledge is about, celebrating the pioneers willing to make the changes that are meaningful not just the one that feel easy.
Ciaran
September 29th, 2009 at 1:23 am
I am an environmental lawyer. I live in NZ and have a brother in Dublin with his 2 kids. My parents are English and Irish to most relatives are in the UK and Ireland. Long haul is regular for us out of NZ as are local flights.
I have 2 small children – 5 and 3. When I read that the coral reefs are essentially gone I decided, enough. I want to look my children in the eye and say ‘we are doing everything we can about this’.
My reflection is that until you stop flying you dont really take on board personally how urgent this is. Better to see it like a relationship that was fabulous but you know has no future, and end it on a good note. And stopping flying means that you immediately and practically being to organise to decarbonize your lifestyle. And others have to ask you about it etc etc – a fairly powerful ripple in the pond.
Love what you are doing and can pledge gold.
See the site stopflying.org and also
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/local/2906150/Lawyer-stops-flying-to-cut-carbon-emissions
I will get a link to your site.
Tom