The average person on Earth today has a carbon footprint of about 7 tonnes of CO2e. To avoid catastrophic climate change, i.e. to have a reasonable chance of not going beyond 2C above pre-industrial levels, those numbers need to be down to perhaps 4-5t CO2e without 10 years and perhaps 2-3t CO2e within 20 years.

Most return long haul flights are between 1t and 4t CO2e. When we allow for the fact that each person inevitably has some other emissions as well as their flights, it is therefore basic maths that in years when I took long haul flights, I was not living a life consistent with 2C, and was taking more than my fair share of the world´s carbon budget regardless of what else I did to cut my carbon footprint. We can´t be allowed to let fear or shaming stop us from confronting cold hard facts.

I will share, that while I already do all of the shared tips for cutting carbon footprint above and abroad, I also do think “flight shaming” has been beneficial in some ways.

With the advent of millions of travel IG accounts, it seems like everyone is a professional traveler these days. And if you aren’t a professional, the travel inspo has certainly made international jet setting seemingly more popular.

So though I don’t think we should be shamed for traveling, I do appreciate that “flight shaming” might give someone p a u s e to consider the repercussions of clicking purchase of that flight.

Like mentioned in an above comment, “we need everyone imperfectly trying to reduce their footprint just a little”.

If we all bought 1 less flight a year, wouldn’t that eventually lead to an airline flying the route for example from Mexico City to NYC one less time per day? One less flight flown on each route will eventually decrease the emissions by plane flights dramatically.

After all we do vote by our pocketbook. Airlines will eventually listen and fly less flights and use more Dreamliners with cleaner emissions based on demand.

So yes, Shaming someone is never right. Showing them to be conscientious of their decisions is.

Thanks for sharing.

Agreed that it doesn’t do any good to shame others or feel guilty about flying. We can just try to do better.

However in our defence- most New Zealanders go overseas for a long time. When you go you go for a few years or months because it is so costly compared to our low wage economy. When we get to another continent we happily use trains because we are so amazed how fast, comfortable and efficient they are. They are also very cheap in some places. I personally enjoy looking out the window and seeing daily life. Because of the cost we tend to space our trips out and more often go to countries closeby (relatively). We are also trying to plant a billion trees to do our bit. We don’t need to make many changes to our daily life because we’ve always been pretty green about most things. Our power production is also pretty reasonable being mostly based on water, hydrothermal power and wind.

Despite this, I still feel we need to start thinking hard about the choices we are making when we travel.

We should ask them to take action on that, we can do that with being active in our local and national politics.

And of course, these are side work for all you and others mentioned.

How do you guys reduce your carbon footprint? 🙂

One concern I’d have with the move to new more efficient planes cars etc. (electric/hybrid etc.) Is the emissions from production. Often it would take years and years for the carbon savings due to efficiency to pay back the initial debt from manufacture.

It’s a balancing act of getting the most out of each vehicle to diminish production emissions/distance travelled, Vs actual running efficiency.