The growing anti-aviation community: What you need to know about the No-Fly Movement

Growing numbers of people have been abandoning air travel in favour of more environmentally conscious transport. Could individual emission reduction efforts be the way forward?

A growing community of climate activists are swearing off flying in an attempt to lessen their carbon footprint. The No-Fly Movement originated in Sweden alongside the Swedish term flygskam, which means “flight shame”, and continues to gain traction through the support prominent of climate activists, such as Greta Thunberg and Dame Emma Thompson (Saner, 2019, para 3; Goldstein, 2019). Following its takeoff in Sweden, the Flight Free movement spread to the UK and is now seen present in 57 countries, with the current Flight Free 2021 campaign mobilising a growing number of people globally (Flight Free World, 2021).

'An Emirates Airbus A380 airliner is overflying Greece in the blue sky at 39.000 feet, flying from Rome Fiumicino Airport to Dubai International DXB airport, Photocredit: NurPhoto via Getty Images' (Goldstein, 2019)

Substantial global fears for our planet's future have left people scrambling for ways in which they can help reduce emissions in their everyday life. As air travel is a significant contributor to global emissions and only predicted to grow, it seems like a valid sacrifice. The aviation sector is predicted a further 3.5% growth by 2036, correlating to an estimated 8.2 billion passengers (Goldstein, 2019). These statistics are worrisome given that the sector's emissions contributed 2.5% of global CO2 emissions in 2018 (Ritchie, 2020). It is estimated that five out of every ten international tourists take air transport, and with modern lifestyle trends, international holidays have become the new norm for the growing populations of high-income countries (Dredge, 2001). To give a simpler picture for the gravity of taking a flight over cleaner transport methods, "avoiding one transatlantic return flight would save as much as half the emissions you'd save from living car-free for an entire year" (Marcus, 2021, para 15).

Another reason for individuals to take matters into their own hands with personal emission reduction efforts, is that technically aviation emissions are not categorised into national emission outputs for countries and so they are absent from binding international treaties (e.g., Paris Agreement) (Ritchie, 2020). The heavy impact high-income countries have on emissions drastically outweighs the lower-income countries like the Pacific Islands who face the greatest threats (Sheller, 2018). Therefore, if individual countries are not stepping up to the plate and refusing to admit their full emission responsibility, it is in the hands of us as individuals to take action.

References:

Dredge, D. (2001). ‘Leisure lifestyles and tourism: Socio-cultural, economic and spatial change in Lake Macquarie, Tourism Geographies’, 3(3), pp. 279-299.

Flight Free World. (2021). Flight Free World 2021. Available at: https://flightfree.world (Accessed: 2 May 2021).

Goldstein, M. (2019). 'Does flight-shaming over climate change pose an existential threat to airlines?', Forbes, 4 June [Online]. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2019/06/04/does-flight-shaming-over-climate-change-pose-an-existential-threat-to-airlines/?sh=4e64dcc3cfcf (Accessed 8 May 2021).

Marcus, S. (2021). 'The carbon footprint of flying, and eco travel alternatives', OVO energy, 19 January [Online]. Available at: https://www.ovoenergy.com/blog/green/the-carbon-footprint-of-flying-and-eco-travel-alternatives.html (Accessed 2 May 2021).

Ritchie, H. (2020). ‘Climate change and flying: what share of global CO2 emissions come from aviation?’, Our World in Data, 22 October [Online]. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-aviation (Accessed: 2 May).

Saner, E. (2019). ‘Could you give up flying? Meet the no-plane pioneers’, The Guardian, 22 May [Online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2019/may/22/could-you-give-up-flying-meet-the-no-plane-pioneers (Accessed: 20 April 2021).

Sheller, M. (2018). Mobility justice: The politics of movement in an age of extremes. Verso Books.