My new online project...

▼

Wednesday, 22 January 2020

Minimising #Flygskam

The Swedish word for 'flight-shame', flygskam, has become trendy. Or indeed #Flygskam is trending. Flying contributes massively to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that's changing our climate. (Late January, no snow!?!?!?). Much as I like rail travel, considering it superior to car, bus or plane, it's not optimal for journeys such as Warsaw-London, a journey to which I am condemned by accident of birth. Once there was the Hook-Moscow Express - board a train at Liverpool Street Station in the morning, on to Harwich, by ferry to Hoek van Holland ('Hook of Holland'), then a wonderful train that would pass through Berlin in the wee small hours and be in Warsaw in the early afternoon. Around 26 hours all told.

The flight takes two and half hours and costs a fraction of that of a train ticket; in any case, the train journey has four legs and requires three changes. Warsaw-Berlin, Berlin-Bonn, Bonn-Brussels, Brussels-London. An alternative is Warsaw-Berlin-Cologne-Brussels-London. All in all, expenses and hassle. [Some tips for London-Warsaw by train here.]

So what can I do - what can we all do - to limit CO2 emissions as we travel around?

This is a handy guide from the BBC website:


I tick most of the boxes here. I can't remember the last time I flew with a suitcase in the baggage hold. I fly with a rucksack, taking the bare minimum - laptop, chargers, camera/lens. I have clothes in London, which makes it easier. I fly directly from nearest airport to nearest airport; I can walk to the station at both ends for a short electric-train journey to and from the airports. I never fly business or first (for a two-hour flight it makes no sense). The front of the plane has two-plus-two row-seating, the rest is three-plus-three. The fewer people sit up front, the further forward the curtain separating the two classes is positioned; the more people on board to divide that CO2 by.

One more tip from me - don't buy food on the plane - there's an inordinate amount of packaging waste involved. Yesterday I indulged in the tapas box on BA. Two little aluminium containers (one with cheese, one with a meat paste) with foil lids; two plastic bags, one with olives, a second with mini bread-sticks and crackers; two strips of plastic foil containing jamon de Serrano; another plastic bag with napkin and toothpick (for the olives); the whole thing in a cardboard box sealed with a disc of sticky plastic. Given the demands in airline galleys for speed and efficiency, I doubt there's any segregation of waste into metal, plastic and cardboard; it's all too fiddly to separate by hand.

OK - so doing all these things, how many kilo of  CO2 am I saving? According to the ICAO carbon calculator, a one-way flight from Warsaw to London generates 237kg of CO2. How much less for flying light? I don't know. But every little helps.

Now that my blessed father has passed away, I feel less need to fly to London frequently, there's business, someone from the firm has to be in London for this event or that meeting, and given that I don't rack up hotel bills, it makes sense for that person to be me. But if we can move this meeting back a month, and double it up with another event - well, that makes sense too.

In the mean time, I shall keep on walking, eating less meat, buying less stuff and staying conscious about my effects on Planet Earth.

[Update January 2023: this was to be my penultimate flight to the UK - from March 2020 I have not flown anywhere.]

This time two years ago:
Notes from the Arena of the Unwell II

This time four years ago:
Ice - pond - night

This time six years ago:
Sorry, taki mamy klimat - Polish rail in winter

This time eight years ago:
Music of the Trees

This time nine years ago:
Studniówka - a hundred days before the exams

This time ten years ago:
It's all in the mind - but where's that?

This time 11 years ago:
Roztopy - the big melt-down

This time 12 years ago:
The year's most depressing day
at

2 comments:

  1. White Horse Pilgrim5 February 2020 at 00:02

    I do remember the Hook - Warsaw train from the 1980s. It took a long time, however there were some fascinating conversations along the way.

    The majority of journeys are relatively short: the graph is one half of a bell curve, more or less. Short trips could be walked or cycled, or use buses or trams, infrastructure and services permitting. Trains compete effectively with flying up to around three hours rail; travel time (and perhaps a bit more: rail is now the dominant mode between London and lowland Scotland cities now). Perhaps a growing high speed rail network will obviate the need for short-haul flights up to 500 miles or even more? Beyond that, what? Teleconferences for business. Alternative destinations where there are any (obviously not for family trips) - though what UK city is half as attractive as, say, Prague?

    So 'decarbonising' transport needs to aim at the low-hanging fruit of shorter journeys to begin with. That will require serious expenditure and, I fear, more than a nudge to the population.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Michael Dembinski5 February 2020 at 14:30

    @WHP

    Excellent comment - thank you! You ask: "what UK city is half as attractive as, say, Prague?" Made me think... Edinburgh, of course, but I'd say Liverpool is interesting. Birmingham too, and Glasgow - all were total dumps in the 1980s but have come on a long way thanks to urban regeneration programmes (EU-funded!) that have greatly improved the city centres, making them vastly more interesting to tourists. I've been to Liverpool three times in the past decade and look forward to going back later this year.

    Invest not only in transport infrastructure, but in tourist amenities to make people want to visit local attractions rather than flying to more distant ones!

    ReplyDelete