Thursday, February 08, 2007

Love Miles

I think there are some significant things to argue with in George Monbiot's _Heat_ (excerpts here: http://www.turnuptheheat.org/?page_id=7) but one of them is not his assessment of the airline industry. He does what I think is a thorough and careful analysis of the possibilities of cleaning up the airline industry, and concludes that there is no way to do it. Air flight causes so many negative effects, from contrails to the carbon emission, that, as Monbiot observes,

"...the climate impact of aeroplanes is not confined to the carbon they produce. They release several different kinds of gases and particles. Some of them cool the planet, others warm it. The overall impact, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is a warming effect 2.7 times that of the carbon dioxide alone. .. (and)...aviation has been growing faster than any other source of greenhouse gasses...Unless something is done to stop this growth (in flying habits) aviation will overwhelm all the cuts we manage to make elsewhere."

A just carbon allotment, that allowed everyone on earth a fair share of the carbon we can emit, would mean that one flight across the US or one transatlantic flight would cost one's entire carbon allotment for a year - and by one flight, I mean *one way* - you can't come back. After taking that flight you would be entitled to no electric lights, heat, food or shelter. We might conceivably plan for an every decade or so trip if we were very careful. But the carbon allotment is not generous, and it would be stretch.

Monbiot considers alternative fuels for airplanes, and concludes that it is impossible to tranform the world's air fleets to anything more sustainable. None of the alternative fuels are possible, and some have worse global warming impacts than the current ones. For example, hydrogen fueled planes, Monbiot documents, would likely have a climate impact 13 times greater than current airplanes.

Monbiot's basic conclusion is that we have to give up flying - period. 96% of present flights would have to be grounded, unless we could recreate a fleet of small prop planes, but even then we'd talking about cutting about 90% of all flights.

Now this means two things. First of all, it means that we have to give up business travel - period. Video or internet conferences only. There is no excuse for flying around the world to do things that could be done over the internet - and yes, it will be harder to do them by internet, but if the choice is having all the people of Bangladesh drown, or creating an annual Hurricane Katrina, tough patooties. Or you can travel by train (occasionally, if your train is powered by electricity with sequestered carbon - and most of them aren't) and expect your trips to take longer. I'll be doing this - I'm presently turning down all opportunities to speak that involve a plane.

Recreational travel is also off the table - no more trips to lie in the sun, no more backpacking around the world unless you are prepared to get there by sailing ship or train or on foot, or perhaps to live more or less nomadically, allotting all of your carbon share to travel and owning and using only what you can carry on your back. Most of us have seen all of the world we are going to see. This is an enormous pity and source of grief for me, and it comes with some real consequences - knowing about the rest of the world makes it more real to us. It is easier to care about people in other countries when you have met some of them, seen their lives, been in their homes. But we're going to have care *more* about them, not less, and still not know them. This is a source of great grief - many of the people I care about most come from or reside now in other countries. The idea of not knowing them, of not seeing them is a real agony to me. But I do not know any better solution.

What will be even harder is what Monbiot calls "love miles" - the issue of how do we deal with far flung people we care about. How do we deal with the fact that our families are seperated, and if we live like this, we may never see each other again? How do we live with the idea that grandchildren might not know grandparents, and parents might lose adult children not just for months, but for decades? How do we deal with aging families, or ill members, weddings, funerals, and other seeming necessities.

The answer to that is that we do a lot of hard thinking and talking to one another. We won't enjoy it - but we have no choice. This is not a case where we can inflict the problem on other people - flying is a privelege of the rich, and the burden sits squarely on our shoulders. And unfortunately, the solution is practically unAmerican - we're going to have to voluntarily restrict our comfort and happiness and change our lives in ways that are usually off the table in conversation. That is, we're going to have to decide flat out if we'd rather see each other or if we'd rather live apart.

My own family and friends probably have an average degree of flying associated wtih them. Most of our family and social circle live in the Boston/NY/WA corridor, but there are some significant outlyers in California and Washington, and a few scattered midwesterners. Every other year or so we're invited to a major family event involving flight. One to two times per year, my father comes from Bellingham, WA to visit his grandchildren on the east coast. Two months from now, Eric's side of the family will convene for the unveiling of his grandparent's graves, and a number of family members will fly in from across the country. My step-mother is headed shortly to CA with her sister to visit their aging father and step-mother who are starting to have serious health problems. What do we do about this?

We talk about it. I recognize that not everyone will immediately accept this necessity, but there is no question that whether through carbon taxes or emissions caps, eventually, air travel will become much less frequent. The challenge to us is to make our changes *before* it is mandatory, because otherwise we risk even more serious consequences. But this is hard. It is one thing to say, "I'm sorry, no, I can't attend my sister's wedding because the government has put caps on flights" and another to say, "No, Sis, I'm sorry I'm not coming to your wedding, but I care more about global warming than you." Or to say to an elderly, failing parent, "I can't be here for you in the last years of your life because doing so is warming the planet." But despite the fact that all of this is crazy-hard, it is necessary. Emissions caps will come, but the odds are we're already at the point where the seas may becomes sterile, famine widespread and hurricanes of the Katrina sort an annual event - the planet will keep getting warmer even if we stopped all emissions today. So delaying makes the long term consequences greater.

So what we need to do is begin by sitting down with loved ones who live far away, and asking "what do we do about this that enables us to leave a planet for our children and still enables us to care for one another." The answers will be different for every family. In some cases, phone calls, email and internet video conferencing might be enough, particularly when everyone is a grownup, or when the benefits of staying apart outweigh the risks. But in other cases, we're probably going to decide that our current distance may not be the way to go.

That's a really hard conversation to have. Because someone, maybe everyone, is going to have to make sacrifices. Either your kids will grow up without their grandparents or you may have to give up your chosen career, your beloved home, the things and place you love. We're going to have to ask "do you come here, do I go there, do we meet in the middle." That's a lot of people relocating. People are going to have to adapt to new places, new economies, new climates and cultures. But there's no avoiding it. Either we do as the pioneers did and accept that distance communication is what is left for us, that we will travel to see our distant families once a decade or less (that is, you can see the new baby, the 10 year old and the college graduate), or we will have to live closer together.

I need to have this conversation with my father. He likes Bellingham, and frankly, we often get along better when he lives 3000 miles from me. But I can't in good conscience keep sending him plane tickets. For older people, we may have to press them to make unpleasant changes at hard times in their lives. For our children, we will have to explain why the school trip to Israel and the yearly visit to Grandma in Arizona is no longer ok. Young adults may have to decide whether to pursue their dream career or one that could enable them to live close to home. Families may have to give up some of their dreams and make up new ones. It will not be easy. It is, unfortunately, necessary. Many people who come from families dispersed across national borders may have to struggle to gain entrance into the nations where the people they love reside. This will not be easy.

What is possible is that a society in which we have fewer love miles might be a more coherent and less divided society. Living across the country from one another seems like no big deal when you are young and your parents are healthy - the move to California or New York or Singapore to pursue that career opportunity, that graduate education often seems like a good idea to young adults. Afterall, how much do you need to hang out with your parents and siblings anyway? You can always fly back.

But even in a world of unlimited air travel, I notice consequences for people I know and love. Living far from your family is no big deal when you are young, but when you start having children, that isolation is often very difficult. A friend of mine, whose siblings and parents are in CA, and whose husband's parents and sibs are in WI mentioned how lonely she often was - and all the grandparents visit regularly now. No matter how free you are to fly, it is sad when grandchildren long for grandparents they cannot see, or when you need someone to help you with the baby.

And illness, disability and aging place enormous stresses on families even if you can fly - what do you do when your aging parents begin to have a series of health crises? No one can fly weekly across the country. What happens when a family member develops cancer, or is struck by a car? I've seen so many people frustrated because they cannot *help* one another, and they desperately want to. I've felt that myself when my mother had surgery or my sister was ill after having a baby, and both live within driving distance for real emergencies.

It may be that once we get used to our new reality, there will be some powerful benefits - but there is no doubt there will be major losses as well. Again, the only reason we could possibly imagine doing this is that it is worth the price - that ensuring that our children and grandchildren have food and water and are safe from rising seas is worth it.

Sharon

55 comments:

RAS said...

I've always been a big fan of science fiction and fantasy. When I was about 12, I was really into this one author whose hey day had been before I was born. In one of her books, set hundreds of years in the future, there was a casual mention of how people had once flown through the air to get places, but that had been stopped because it wasn't practical and it hurt the planet too much.

As a child, I laughed at this and didn't give it another thought -until I read this post, and suddenly I thought -Hey! She was right!

You are also right -people are going to have to make a lot of tough decisions in the years to come, and it's not going to be easy.

Stone Fence Farm said...

"Can't we all just stay in one place?"

Anonymous said...

There are 2 trips I long to make. One is to take my children to see my childhood home in England, and let them have the sort of holiday I used to have, poking around old castles, exploring the dales, visiting Roman sites.

THe other is to take my chidlren to the country of their birth, India. I've already blown years of carbon allowance bringing them out of India.

One of the strange things about PO is that on the one hand I worry about such more or less pointless things as making sure the hair from the hair brushes gets into the compost, yet on the other hand, I try to find a way (and there isn't one) to justify these trips.

MEA

Anonymous said...

Your post described some of the issues and thoughts I have had about my living in California dn most of my family residing in Minnesota. Especially last year, when there were several family crises, and I needed to fly there several times. I realized that could not continue (for many of the reasons you wrote about), so I will be moving there (with how that impacts my own life, yet is for the greater good). Thanks for all the thoughtful writing!

Bonnie

Ilargi said...

MEA Anonymous,

Take your kids to England and India, while you still can (make it one trip, less polluting, and cheaper, do two weeks each),
No need to feel guilty about it. Enjoy it, to the fullest, while you can, no guilt allowed!! The harder times will come soon enough, for both you and your kids. Make sure they understand it's likely the one and only time, but don't take it away from them. They'll be richer beings because of it, and the world will need richer beings. Desperately.

You can make up for the “guilt points” when you get back, by being an inspiration to those around you. That’ll be your price to pay, your positive energy. Tell your kids the same. Make them promise to spend two hours a week with lonely old people around for the next year.

Think about that on the way over, it may well be the last time. You're not doing anyone a service by not going. Trust me on this one. The way to justify the trip is to see its true value, and to repay that once you get back.


Sharon,

You lay it all out beautifully once again, you make it real by relating the personal, family, effects this will have on you. A talent that comes to you naturally, that's much more recognizable to people than abstract numbers and percentages,

However, you also, inadvertently, tell the tale of why it will never happen on a voluntary basis. The choices to make are simply too hard and too complicated for the average Joe and Jane.

In reality, flights are set to double by 2025. Airports are expanding like crazy, Boeing sells more planes than they have in ages, maybe ever. It'll grind to a halt way before, but that's the direction it's taking.

In the UK, the press is so full of the environment, it might as well be printed on green paper, and Tony Blair's every second word is Kyoto. But the amount of flights over there goes through the roof, and Blair says less would be "too inconvenient".

We will not stop this of our own accord. Business travel, most of it tax-deductible (meaning we pay), would seem the first to have-to-go, but it will be the last. We wanted a growth economy, we got it. It can do one of two things: grow or collapse. No middle ground.

Some things you can't change just because you feel it’s the right thing to do. It’s good for people to see the limits and limitations of what is possible. Just like freedom only has value within boundaries.

Similarly, we’re faced with the fact that we can’t change our fellow human beings. We ourselves can change, and it may make us feel good, but we can’t expect others to follow.

Jim Kunstler said it well:

"We'll keep doing what we do until we can't, and then we won't."

Ilargi said...

Norlight and MEA,

Just so we're clear on the matter:

Giving up on what has true emotional value for you, as MEA suggests she do, is not the way.

99% of flights have no such value, though. Don't give up the ones that do. Give up on emptiness, not on fulfillment.

Flights themselves are not evil, just like cars or TV's. using them for the wrong reasons is.

Anonymous said...

My family lives all over the world - the southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere. Unless the money cost of flying becomes prohibitive, I will not voluntarily limit my visits to them, and neither will they to me.
Peak oil people and climate change activists are far too pessimistic about the future.
You will not stop the march of technological progress, however many guilt trips you try to lay on people and finger wagging you do.
I think that you people have replaced Christianity with this new religion of environmentalism; in earlier times you would probably have become a Quaker.
That explains your "holier than thou" attitude and attempts to make "heretics" such as myself feel guilty. Well they don't work, and I don't feel in the least bit guilty.

RAS said...

anonymous, yes -destroying the planet is a real sign of progress.

BTW, get your religions straight: Quakers do not have a holier than thou attitude, and far from it. It's the ordinary "Christians" (who really aren't, but I won't get into that here) who tend to display that arrogance, which you yourself just modeled very well.

Good post Sharon. I'm going to go back to bed now, and nurse my bad case of strep throat.

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure how your scheme accounts for the work of people who have to be on other continents. I am a historian of Germany; I teach at an American university. Perhaps you don't feel this way, but I see what I do is essential to creating a possibility in the minds of our youth of seeing the world from a different perspective, one outside of the one they adopt naturally. Every summer I go to Germany for three months to sit in a library. I think about the environmental costs, but most of what I look at can't be microfilmed or digitized, it's too fragile. I *have* to be there. And the graduate students I train--how are they supposed to teach the history of other groups and cultures if they have never been there? I think you need to balance out your thinking with a realization that the globalizing world requires some capacity for us to come into *real*, not *virtual* contact with the people, cultures and histories that we encounter regularly.

jewishfarmer said...

I have a lot of sympathy with the scholarly obligation argument - when I studied 17th century British literature, there was material that I had to go to England to see. And yet - are you disputing the basic assessments of the impact of climate change - that we have to keep emissions under 440ppm, which means a 94% cut for the US, or are you arguing that the need for scholarship outweighs the need for the people of Bangladesh to have a country? Or are you arguing that your compelling and important work should reduce the right of other people to emit carbon so that you and your students can fly?

I agree with you that this is very difficult, and it represents enormous difficulties for people of all sorts - for our ability to know and understand other cultures, for our families, for our jobs. But there are millions of people out there with good excuses and reasons for *needing* to fly - what do you say to the business man who says, "I need to see the product or meet with the vendor - not to do so harms my livelihood." To the student who says, "I want to go to the best graduate program available - and come home regularly?" To the family members who want to see each other? To the ones cut apart by national borders? Millions of people, all with excellent reasons for what they do add up to an enormous failure - and enormous consequences. I do not choose this assessment - being an academic, I think you'll understand the distinction - I find the reasoning unassailable. If we don't cut flights, we have to cut other things - electricity, heat (actually, we have to cut those *too* but beyond the levels we're prepared to endure).

If you are arguing with the data, present alternate data. If you are arguing that we should an inequitable solution, letting academics fly for scholarly reasons and taking that out of the carbon emissions of someone else, make that case. If you are arguing that we should warm the planet more to have better scholarship, make the case. If you are arguing that we should give up something else - electricity, make that argument. But it is data, not preference that leads me there, and no amount of personal balancing will get the data to say anything other than what it does. What what is your solution? Mine is that in the great scheme of global warming tragedies, a decline in the level of extra-German scholarship on Germany may not be #1. But I'm not being snide here - I don't deny this hurts, that it disrupts economies and cultures. But what else do we do?

Sharon

RAS said...

Therein lies the rub. We can't ruin the planet to continue with international scholarship -I'm sorry, but that's just plain wrong. Nor can we do so to go visit relatives who live across national borders.

Other people's right to live and have a country outweighs our right to go to graduate school!
But people don't see it that way. They think "my" flight won't do any harm, so why not go? I need the degree, so why shouldn't I do it? These are the kinds of thoughts that occur to those who have lived a lifetime of privlege and conveinence -never realized that their choices do hurt others.
But it is what we are dealing with. So, how can this possibly be overcome?
I don't have the answers, especially not right now when I'm still sick. But I'll think on it.

Jana said...

How does air travel compare to train and ship travel? Maybe the German scholar takes the train to port and a ship across the Atlantic? Maybe she stays ayear instead of 3 months? I just don't know enough yet to answer that.

Anonymous said...

I just see a fundamental contradiction in the statement that people are not allowed to make long distance travel, and they need to accept that because of all of the other people living on the earth, but they have no knowledge of people living as little as 500 miles away from them! Most people have a very hard time understanding why they should make long term sacrifices for people they have never seen, and video links do absolutely nothing to make people understand why a monsoon in Bangladesh has any bearing on their lives. Study abroad is often one of the most fundamental experiences in reshaping students' awarenesses of their interconnection with people in other areas of the planet. The US consciousness is already way too local, and what you propose is that we should accelerate that condition. Sorry, I don't see it. Actually, I am on a year sabbatical right now, and planted firmly in Europe, without a car, since public transportation is excellent. The idea of a ship trip is not bad, except try to find one. Beds are limited, and extremely expensive--as much as four times what a plan trip costs. I also have to eat.

You are clearly an apocalyptic prophet. I study religious rhetoric, so I am not offended by it, but I frankly also read a "holier than thou" attitude in your words akin to the tone in Revelations. I personally don't think that is the way to reach people, but whatever, how you communicate is your choice. You should just be aware that this sort of discourse has little effect on the mainstream, even on the center/moderate left that agrees in general about energy conservation. You would be more effective in trying to get people to move gradually--they might not completely avert catastrophe, but at least they wouldn't reject what you are saying out of hand.

jewishfarmer said...

You know, I recognize a "I cannot address the data so I'll attack the format of the argument" response when I see one. I tend to expect better from fellow scholars, though.

Again, this is not my argument - it is Monbiot's. And it is based on several empirical pieces of data that you have not disputed. The first is that if we keep total atmospheric carbon under 440ppm, we have, according to the Potsdam institute, about a 7 in 10 shot of not passing the critical cascade point of 2 degree temperature rise. Do you dispute the 440 ppm figure? Or the evidence that suggests that after 2 degrees, we begin to lose the rainforests, permafrost and ocean plankton at a higher rate, thus increasing temperature rapidly, with corresponding icemelt. If you have a meaningful counterargument involving this data, please feel free to present it.

Or do you dispute the basic idea that carbon should be allocated equally worldwide? Is your argument that people in Chad should not have electricity for running water so that you can continue your scholarship? Or do you claim that we should continue to warm the planet despite the consequences, in order to preserve your job - since, after all, you get to eat that way. Pity so many other people - the UN estimates 200 million - will suffer increased food insecurity that way.
Again, if you can document otherwise, go ahead.

I can't imagine that you became an academic using arguments as poor as "We need to warm the planet and drown the people of Micronesia so we can understand those people better." I agree with you that the US is a very parochial and over-localized society. Too bad that an era of world travel didn't fix that - we cannot now ask others to endure fatal and serious consequences in order to open our minds. It may well be that we don't have to understand people in Bangladesh - maybe we just have to let them live. As the Inuit people who right now are before congress begging for their lives argue, they want mostly to be permitted to preserve their way of life - and it is our way of life that prevents that.

Unfortunately, ship travel uses *more* energy and burns more fossil fuels, although because it doesn't make contrails, its fossil fuel impact is lower. I haven't done any analysis, but Monbiot says nice things about airships, a la the Hindenberg - apparently
they don't explode much anymore.
But ultimately, there simply is no "right" to cheap air travel - perhaps you could persuade others to give up some of their carbon allowance because of the urgency of your work - you might make a case that without good German scholarship, the world economy would suffer greatly, and people might donate to your cause. Or perhaps your University would support purchasing excess carbon allotments from the poor to enable you to travel - the value of your work, as you say, being so great.

Most of your argument seems to come down to this - I don't want to change my life, and while I don't have any good arguments against the need to, I don't like yours. I sympathize. I suspect many people are going to feel this way about all the things that climate change abatement demands of us. But that doesn't change the fact that we need to make our decisions based on science and reason, not personal preference.

I may well be an apocalyptic prophet, but if I am, I am joined by thousands of scientists world wide who have predicted these consequences and done the useful data gathering and mathematics. The question is not "what do we need to do" but "how do we get there" - IMHO, the most just arrangement would be an equal allocation of output - but I am open to other discussions - at least of the sort that involve actual knowledge, not merely rhetorical descriptions of the argument. If I'm a prophet, I'm in good company, alongside the UN, thousands of scientists, thousands of journalists and others who are attempting to deal with the reality we have. It isn't how I would describe it, but I understand your need to dismiss data you can't address directly by accusing it of having fictional dimensions.

It is interesting to note that right now, in Britain, precisely this discussion is going on about the carbon impact of Tony Blair's flying. It is fascinating to witness the outcry of a newly sensitized public that is concerned with global warming. Oddly, this argument about flight seems to have more credibility than you suggest.

But again, I don't claim these arguments will be popular - I claim they are necessary. And a dispute of necessity cannot be based upon whether a more gradual technique would be more pleasant. I agree it would be - I'd love to rewind and go back 30 years and restart the clock. But dealing with the data we have, and the world we live in, this is the best we can do. If you have any arguments that actually address that data, feel free, again, to present them.

Sharon

jewishfarmer said...

You know, I recognize a "I cannot address the data so I'll attack the format of the argument" response when I see one. I tend to expect better from fellow scholars, though.

Again, this is not my argument - it is Monbiot's. And it is based on several empirical pieces of data that you have not disputed. The first is that if we keep total atmospheric carbon under 440ppm, we have, according to the Potsdam institute, about a 7 in 10 shot of not passing the critical cascade point of 2 degree temperature rise. Do you dispute the 440 ppm figure? Or the evidence that suggests that after 2 degrees, we begin to lose the rainforests, permafrost and ocean plankton at a higher rate, thus increasing temperature rapidly, with corresponding icemelt. If you have a meaningful counterargument involving this data, please feel free to present it.

Or do you dispute the basic idea that carbon should be allocated equally worldwide? Is your argument that people in Chad should not have electricity for running water so that you can continue your scholarship? Or do you claim that we should continue to warm the planet despite the consequences, in order to preserve your job - since, after all, you get to eat that way. Pity so many other people - the UN estimates 200 million - will suffer increased food insecurity that way.
Again, if you can document otherwise, go ahead.

I can't imagine that you became an academic using arguments as poor as "We need to warm the planet and drown the people of Micronesia so we can understand those people better." I agree with you that the US is a very parochial and over-localized society. Too bad that an era of world travel didn't fix that - we cannot now ask others to endure fatal and serious consequences in order to open our minds. It may well be that we don't have to understand people in Bangladesh - maybe we just have to let them live. As the Inuit people who right now are before congress begging for their lives argue, they want mostly to be permitted to preserve their way of life - and it is our way of life that prevents that.

Unfortunately, ship travel uses *more* energy and burns more fossil fuels, although because it doesn't make contrails, its fossil fuel impact is lower. I haven't done any analysis, but Monbiot says nice things about airships, a la the Hindenberg - apparently
they don't explode much anymore.
But ultimately, there simply is no "right" to cheap air travel - perhaps you could persuade others to give up some of their carbon allowance because of the urgency of your work - you might make a case that without good German scholarship, the world economy would suffer greatly, and people might donate to your cause. Or perhaps your University would support purchasing excess carbon allotments from the poor to enable you to travel - the value of your work, as you say, being so great.

Most of your argument seems to come down to this - I don't want to change my life, and while I don't have any good arguments against the need to, I don't like yours. I sympathize. I suspect many people are going to feel this way about all the things that climate change abatement demands of us. But that doesn't change the fact that we need to make our decisions based on science and reason, not personal preference.

I may well be an apocalyptic prophet, but if I am, I am joined by thousands of scientists world wide who have predicted these consequences and done the useful data gathering and mathematics. The question is not "what do we need to do" but "how do we get there" - IMHO, the most just arrangement would be an equal allocation of output - but I am open to other discussions - at least of the sort that involve actual knowledge, not merely rhetorical descriptions of the argument. If I'm a prophet, I'm in good company, alongside the UN, thousands of scientists, thousands of journalists and others who are attempting to deal with the reality we have. It isn't how I would describe it, but I understand your need to dismiss data you can't address directly by accusing it of having fictional dimensions.

It is interesting to note that right now, in Britain, precisely this discussion is going on about the carbon impact of Tony Blair's flying. It is fascinating to witness the outcry of a newly sensitized public that is concerned with global warming. Oddly, this argument about flight seems to have more credibility than you suggest.

But again, I don't claim these arguments will be popular - I claim they are necessary. And a dispute of necessity cannot be based upon whether a more gradual technique would be more pleasant. I agree it would be - I'd love to rewind and go back 30 years and restart the clock. But dealing with the data we have, and the world we live in, this is the best we can do. If you have any arguments that actually address that data, feel free, again, to present them.

Sharon

willow said...

The uproar that Tony Blair's statement that "you can't expect people not to fly"and the assertion that he would continue to fly on holiday caused, did make him within just a few hours, issue a statement to say that he would be offsetting his flights in future. I know that that is not the answer but it is an example of how public opinion can cause a (slight)change in behaviour.
At least the discussion has started.

Anonymous said...

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Anonymous said...

This is a very difficult issue. I agree with Monbiot regarding his conclusions on air travel- although not on many other parts of his book unfortunately. However, he was correct that broaching the idea that there was no way to continue air travel in any form that we have known it in recent decades and still protect the planet would not win him many fans other than from some of us die-hards.

I personally don't fly which makes me unusual in the US- although part of that in truth stems from a fear of heights and not just being environmentally aware! As for everyone else however- we're basically messing with what most Americans and Europeans consider a basic right- to hop on a plane whenever they choose. Of course most of the world's population has never flown and will never do so but somehow we have managed to make air travel a necessity and have planned our lives around that; family in far-flung places, commuter marriages, regular trips to warm places, etc.

Here's the problem though. As long as refraining from flying is optional, the only real impact from choosing to do this will be on those who have made this choice. By not flying you will feel some sense of rightousness in not adding more to the GHG load, and in truth you will have individually emitted less carbon. But other than that, the impacts will be mostly felt in the sacrifices you are making- the family you won't see, the jobs you can't take,the trips you won't make. I know this because I have chosen to live this way. And when all around you see most everyone else in your country flying merrily wherever they wish and you're not-well I think that some resentment will build. And frustration that they don't get it and that you do- and that despite your best efforts they are merrily continuing to drown Bangladeshis and polar bears while jetting to tropical islands in February while you're home shoveling snow.

So- I'm not sure what the solution is other than for governments world-wide to enact strict carbon caps- on everyone. But this won't happen- it would kill the tourist industry, airplanes, etc. So I agree with Kunstler- we will most likely continue as a world to do what we do until we can't do it anymore.

I'm still choosing to not fly- and to emit as few GHG as possible- but I recognize that this is not a choice that most others are making, and they won't unless forced to. Denial is a very strong emotion- and even otherwise environmentally correct types will find a way to rationalize their flying.

Anonymous said...

Very stimulating set of ideas, both in the post and the comments. I believe the German history professor is not exactly arguing with the data so much as griping about the prospect of the passing of a whole way of life. Sharon, I admire your clear-eyed analysis, but 'everyday' folk will likely need to do a lot of mourning for the loss of conveniences that now define us.

A question from a non-specialist as myself: Can someone explain why those companies that promise to 'offset' flight or automobile miles by donating to renewable energy projects are not in fact a solution? I'm skeptical myself, but I'd like someone to unravel that. Or does Monbiot do so in his book?

jewishfarmer said...

I agree with you that there is a lot of mourning to do - that's part of why I wrote this post. The whole thing makes me both sad and frustrated. It also comes unpleasant consequences for me - unlike MEA, who is thinking of taking a once-in-a-decade trip with her children, I was recently offered what could best be described as "money and power" to talk in public - that is, the chance to speak to a highly influential audience and make a ton of money doing it. I've turned it down, but boy, does that suck - I want influence and could use money just as badly as anyone else. *BUT* - someone has to go first, someone has to volunteer.

Where I differ with the previous anonymous person (could you all make up a nickname or use your name or something so that when I respond to your questions I can refer to you as something other than "anonymous #6 ;-)?) is on the subject of individual impact. Because I believe really strongly in the power of individuals to impact others through both example and narrative - I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't. It is true others will go on emitting even if you are among the first to stop - however, people will begin cutting back and making changes as cultural pressures change. Eventually, just as everyone was always a civil rights activist, and there were only four Nazis in Germany (or at least, so you'd believe talking to people), not only will other people do what we're doing, but they'll be unable to conceive of themselves as ever having done anything else. Which isn't to say it is always fun to be an early cultural adopter.

For carbon offsets - I'd have to double check, but I don't think Monbiot mentions them, other than to make the point that offsetting additional carbon really isn't the point, given the level of cut we need to make. And that's part of the issue - that is, we need to invest in renewable energies *and* stop doing things that emit large quantities of greenhouse gasses.

Personally, most of the carbon offset programs I've seen have focused on trees - which first of all, only seem to be effective net carbon absorbers in Rainforests, and second of all, again, defer the real issue - we have to absorb carbon *AND* cut our emissions.

My major object to "offset" strategies is that they sell the illusion that you can buy your way out of this, which is, I think, both wrong in factual terms but also actively harmful perceptually.

Sharon

RAS said...

Sharon, maybe I'm just overly cynical because I'm sick, but I don't think a lot of people really care what happens to the folks in Bangalore, or anywhere else that's not on their block or in their family. We've been doing horrible things to people in those countries for years, and most people don't raise an eyebrow. He**, look what happened here, after Katrina! That outrage made me want to take to the streets, but most people didn't blink. Maybe if those people had been middle class whites the outcry would have been worse. After all, I'm not of the ilk who refers to the people in Latin America -and other places -as the 'little brown people'.

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You people make me sick. I could never afford to fly around as blithely as you do.

I don't know where I went wrong. From reading the comments on this page, it wasn't lack of intelligence or education.

I've got a question for the person who wrote this entry.

If you are so environmentally conscious, why did you have four kids? Your oldest is 6 1/2, I doubt you weren't aware of overpopulation 7 1/3 years ago, or at any time thereafter.

Assuming they have happy, safe, fulfilled lives, you have gone 1.9 children past your "break even" point. Care to hazard a guess as to what kind of energy footprint the little tykes are going to have?

I don't know you, and a lot of other people are popping them out like kittens as well.

But in light of the number of children you have, this whole post is hypocritical. And stupid.

Ilargi said...

Last anonymous:

You don't know who the "you people' are that you address, do you, the ones that make you sick? Who is it that flies around so blithely, according to you?

There's many people that do, if you have issues with them, but this seems an odd place to go look for them. Try an airport?!

Do you feel left out, or angry, for not having had the chance to blithe around?

And a question for you: are you sure that having 4 environmentally conscious kids is worse than 2 environmentally non-conscious ones? Looking at the future, theirs, how do you see that work out?

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Anonymous said...

Great posting Sharon... and refreshing to see sacred cows like air travel being addressed.

As to the "good Christian" that posted about "Unless the money cost of flying becomes prohibitive, I will not voluntarily limit my visits to them, and neither will they to me." I have this reply.

I've heard the rhetoric... "it is a free country and whether I want to conserve or not is my choice". Don't ya just love this mindless (yet unfortunately all too common) "free country" perspective? Another version of it is "If I can afford to buy and drive a Hummer who are you to tell me I cannot."

Who am I? I am one of the other 6.5 billion inhabitants of this planet effected by your behavior! The issue is not whether one person can financially afford to waste, the issue is can the earth and the other 6.5 billion inhabitants afford that kind of greed, and selfishness? When you are the only person on the earth and your behavior does not effect anyone else, then you can have your "free country" rhetoric, but until then consider we are a human family and what any one of us does effects the whole.

Ultimately, the only thing that is really going to change the behavior of most people is when it is too expensive for them to continue to waste. That is why I continue to be a strong advocate for much higher energy prices. A HEAVY carbon tax is just what we need, but at present we lack the political will to implement that.

Todd

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I apologize for not having a link to back up the claim, but I have read that for a cross-country trip, the carbon-debt accumulated in a car (or truck) would actually be worse than that accumulated by an airplane, and that it is the shorter flights that are the worse offenders in terms of carbon emissions. Given the lack of current investment in rail or other inter-city transportation (let alone international travel, a whole different problem), wouldn't a sudden moratorium on all flights cause more problems than it solves, since many people still determined to travel and who have goods that need to be transported would drive instead?

I wonder if, in combination with the carbon taxing other posters have already mentioned, a graduated reduction would be more feasibly enacted, starting with the shorter flights that are more polluting and more easily replaced, to give other forms of transportation a chance to catch up in providing service before just pulling the rug out of the air-traffic system alltogether. Then transcontinental and international travel, as well as the importance of relocalization to reduce the need for so much travel, might be better addressed without so much popular and political resistance. After all, we can talk until we're blue in the face about how all air travel should stop now, but we all know (at least here in the greedy ol' U.S.) it's not going to happen like that barring a major--and local--catastrophe. No politician in office has the political will to do it, and aside from the few conscientiously objecting folks around, no private person will do it, either. I mean, there are still a significant number of people who don't even believe in global warming yet (as hard as that is to comprehend). To try to pass by them a total ban on what a previous poster referred to as their "freedom" to travel, if you'll pardon the pun, just won't fly.

Don't get me wrong--I totally agree with the view that the West's love affair with travel is not as important as the lives of those in 3rd world countries who will be hardest hit by the effects of global warming. I'm simply thinking in terms of what might actually be accomplished short of circumstances forcing the change in lifestyle.

Anonymous said...

Let's deconstruct her article a little bit.

The author lives in the northeast.

"Every other year or so we're invited to a major family event involving flight. One to two times per year, my father comes from Bellingham, WA to visit his grandchildren on the east coast."
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."I need to have this conversation with my father. He likes Bellingham, and frankly, we often get along better when he lives 3000 miles from me. But I can't in good conscience keep sending him plane tickets. For older people, we may have to press them to make unpleasant changes at hard times in their lives. For our children, we will have to explain why the school trip to Israel and the yearly visit to Grandma in Arizona is no longer ok."

(Her dad is going to be so thrilled if he reads this.)

I just did a search on orbitz.com for round trip prices from NY to Seattle. $218 Lowest I saw, you might be able to beat it shopping over time. I'm going to assume this is the price for a coast to coast trip regardless of destination or origin. Will also be using round trip NY to Tel Aviv, $1226, probably more variance in price if you shop.

2 roundtrippers for grandpa, 4 for the kids to Arizona, 4 (eventually) to Israel for the kiddies, and assume 1 family trip a year for the whole family (Mom and Pop don't travel much anymore).

12@$218 = $2616
4@$1226 = $4904
Total = $7520

I come from a world where people work two or three part-time minimum wage jobs to live.

Yet a woman who apparently can't earn much at her job, has no trouble conceiving of spending this much on a frivolous luxury item. I say she can't earn much, because I daily see multi-generational farm families that are very, very depressed. What does her husband do? Why does he apparently make so much money? Is he worth it? Could a warm body off the street that doesn't mumble to himself do that job if he had the connections?

A female, assuming she is monogamously paired with a male has to bear 2.1 children to neither increase nor decrease the world's population. I'm not going to pull out my combinatorics book and figure what's involved with this statistic, but let's assume there is a .05 chance that a given child will not reach reproductive maturity. 4*.05 = .2; 4-.2=3.8 or the "biological load" she delivers to the general population. Dividing by her personal "allocation" she is at 1.9, or she has made her stress on the earth 90% worse in the next generation.

Say 300 million Americans, no immigration. If none of them fly, half of them stay home with the four kids and work at the local organic co-op, we still have a problem in relatively short order.

The math does not work. And whatever values she seeks to impart to these kids, I don't think they are going to live like Bangladeshi's.

Of course this is an academic exercise. Peak oil is going to curtail airflight. Unless we have a wonderful solar or nuclear future with lots of excess energy to manufacture synthetic hydrocarbon fuels for aircraft, only the very rich are going to fly.

Worldwide? Population isn't going to make it that high. And not for any reason I would choose.

Know what happened in the old days when dad was dying 3000 miles away? You heard about it by mail or telegram. Your sister gets married? The same, and you weren't there.

Know what pisses me? You chumps shouldn't have the money to live like this. I see people every day that sound smarter, work harder, and damn sure make a lot less money than you guys. Based on what I've read you should be getting my coffee at the diner or picking up my garbage. And the waitress and the garbageman should have your jobs.

Anna Haynes said...

"offered the chance to speak to a highly influential audience and make a ton of money doing it..."

Your life is your own Sharon, but please consider costs vs benefits here. If you speak half as well as you write, IMO the planet would benefit from your *not* turning down oppportunities to influence the influencers. You could donate the money to charity if that's the issue, but please, we need more of your voice out there, not less.

in my opinion.

And re carbon offsets - my understanding is that what they do is 'harvest' the 'low hanging fruit' of energy efficiency, so for now, they're effective.
(after the easy energy improvements have been addressed, they won't be)

jewishfarmer said...

Ok, Anonymous, you have confused my rhetorical mention of the kind of trips people make with the actual trips my family makes. We have never been to Israel, or Arizona as a family, or anywhere that required flight. I have flown 1x in 6 years. Only my oldest child has ever been on a plane, and that only once to attend a family wedding - long before the impact of flying on climate change was known to me, or the state of the research was available. I was using those as examples of trips people might make. You might want to read a little more carefully, and I will try and write more carefully. I can understand why you missed the transition to "older people" and mistook "our children" for "my children" but that's not what I actually said.

I send my Dad 1 ticket per year (and yes, I told him about this and talked to him before I posted it), and last year he bought one too to come to my sister's wedding. The total cost came to under $300 dollars. And it is financially something of a stretch for us - we save all year for my kids to be able to visit their grandfather for a week or so. I value that more than other things I could buy for the same amount of money. My family lives on about 35K per year, including our CSA and my husband's teaching job, and we have lived on much less. Both of us can make considerably more money, doing things we don't especially think are useful or ethical, but we don't, and we're content with what we have, and with what we have to do in order to enable our family to be together. What we hope to do is invite my father to come live here, since there is nothing keeping him in Washington. If not, we'll have to rely on the internet and letters, as you say.

You are welcome to try and compete with my husband for his job as a professor of astrophysics. I'm sure if you mumble loud they'll hire you instead ;-).

I'm not going to discuss why I have my children with someone who is so obviously out to get a rise out of me. It really doesn't matter what I say - you just want to troll. What I will say is that our family does everything it can to mitigate our climate and environmental impact - we certainly consume considerably less than the average family of four. But you are right - that doesn't change the fact that I have four children, and that their lifetime impact, no matter how careful will be greater than two children's.

Where you are wrong is that it makes no difference then what we do. My family has an ecological footprint less than 1/2 the size of most American families, despite our greater numbers - in fact, we made that calculation back when my husband's grandparents lived with us, so that impact was more even more people. My kids are here - period, just like you are. But that doesn't change that every reduction we make in our consumption is preferrable to what would have been had we not.

Your reasoning is flawed - we all of us start from where we are, and from there, we go to where we can. Do my kids live like Bangladeshi children? No. But do they consume like average American children - absolutely not, and each year we consume less - and increase our happiness.

The US can support its present population, and even some moderate degree of growth in all likelihood - at a dramatically reduced rate of consumption. That's not a defense of having four kids, just an observation.

I wonder that you bother to reply, if this is all so very wasteful. Why not just spend your time chatting with the garbageman (we don't have those out here in the country) instead - uses way less fossil fuels and saves everyone some time.

Cheers,

Sharon

Ilargi said...

A few quick points on carbon offsets:

First, it's always better to not produce emissions. Carbon offsets, we all understand that, are sort of an invitation to keep on emitting, even perhaps increase emissions; we pretend our actions can be bought off, along with our conscience.

There are two types of carbon offsets: the 'private' kind and the 'institutionalized' kind.

Private:
You donate money that the receiver promises to invest in -mostly- planting trees. Anybody can set up such an undertaking, there is very little regulation. Not that all are crooks, but the way it's set up leaves -plenty- room for abuse.
Also, there are many doubts about the amount of CO2 that can be absorbed by trees. It's not an issue to deal with in-depth here, but there's not much clear-cut about it. There are various reports that state that for instance Canada's boreal forests are becoming net emitters, not absorbers, of GHG, likely due to global warming. So what a tree absorbs is questionable.
Then there are many different values attached to a ton of CO2, ranging from $1 to $200 or more; it's anyone's guess. The company that sells the offsets will (be free to) choose a price that gives them a profit, and one you will still be willing to pay. The good old supply and demand market (you can offset a transatlantic flight with some $20). No-one, though, really knows how much financial damage a ton of CO2 does. After all, what's the market value of a polar bear?

Institutionalized:
Under treaties like the Kyoto Protocol, there are provisions for governments and industries to sell and buy carbon credits. Ironically, the EU gives away credits for free to companies, some of which make a nice profit selling them on the market. There are many projects that establish 'green' facilities in developing countries, paid for by the rich, who can then emit the same or more in their own backyard. Moreover, the systems are rife with question marks:
• A Kyoto loophole has allowed Chinese projects to rake in billions of dollars by taking out HFC-23, a gas 11,000 times as potent as CO2, with cheap scrubbers. HFC-23 is a rare gas, but it now surpasses CO2 in total trade value, with 6000% profit margins.
• At the recent Kyoto conference in Nairobi, there were protesters from India complaining that westerners were forcing "offset projects" on them that they didn't want at all, in this case hydro-power dams that would destroy their rivers. These dams are supposedly cleaner than coal plants, but the locals didn't want a coal plant in the first place.
• In North America, as in Europe, there are 'green groups' that make a lot of money from selling emissions credits, and not all of them run appropriate checks on the true effects of their projects. Ironically, they would have to fly around the world all the time to see how much they offset. Don't look, don't tell comes to mind.

In short, the idea is nice, but it's poorly regulated, its effects are debatable, and it's used mostly for profit purposes, not to 'do good', even by environmental groups..

Anonymous said...

Even my one in a lifetime (their lifetime) trip with my children, whatever emotional gains we might get from, isn't justifiable in terms of what it takes from other people. Doesn't mean I might not do it: I have come to terms with the fact I'm not a good person.

As for needing to travel to understand other people, in many parts of the US you can talk to a wide vareity of people with all sorts of different cultural backgrounds and idea about important questions as what makes someone human and what is Good. Try reading essays by some from a different background. You might not get the understanding you'd get learning their lanuage and living emersed in their world for 40 years, but you'll get more out of it than the average "only leave the compound on a guided tour, never talk to anyone but the guards and guides" 2 weeks in some exotic local.

MEA

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