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Toward sustainable travel: breaking the flying addiction

By Elisabeth Rosenthal - posted Monday, 31 May 2010


Where there is very high-speed rail and the distance is less than 350 miles, such as Barcelona to Madrid, train is a no-brainer, quicker than flying. Once you’ve ridden Spain’s AVE on the 2 ½-hour ride between those cities, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would fly the route.

Some of the reason, perversely, is price: The explosion of low-cost airlines on routes like Barcelona to Madrid and Paris to London means that it is often cheaper to take a flight than a train, regardless of the emissions consequences.

For businesses, Dickinson of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) believes that high-quality video conferencing, like Cisco-AT&T’s Telepresence, will displace a huge amount of flying. (Full disclosure: Dickinson has financial interest in a company that sets up conferences.) Video conference? I know. Videophones have been on display for decades at Disney’s EPCOT Center but, in real life, the concept has never quite gelled; it long had the feel of those telephone chats with astronauts floating in the Space Station. But with Broadband it can really be different, with images and sound so clear that it appears that the people you face on a large screen are actually in the room.

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Indeed, even though Dickinson has been promoting the idea for several years, he, himself, continued to fly a lot. But when a volcanic ash cloud recently turned London into a no-fly zone, he was forced into a serious road test: On April 18 he was scheduled to interview candidates for the job of CDP’s China director in Beijing. When his flight was canceled, he decided to nonetheless proceed with the interviews, virtually. “I interviewed three candidates and chose one - it was unbelievably good,” he said. “Next time I won’t buy a ticket.”

I think this attitude will spread, and is embedded already in the generation now emerging from universities and graduate schools. While people of my generation feel the need for eye contact to negotiate or a handshake to seal a deal, this new generation is far more comfortable with the reality of virtual presence. My two teenagers happily do group school projects and debate team preparation over Skype, MSM or Google chat. When I (50-something) suggest they should meet up in person, they roll their eyes. What would be the point of schlepping across town for tasks like this? You schlep for fun things, like movies and parties.

Price pressure, too, I think will force us to rethink this flying habit. In 2012, airlines enter Europe’s emissions trading scheme. If airline fuel or emissions are ever taxed or traded - and I’d guess they will be - ticket prices will rise, and travel will decline.

Of course all this won’t be enough to totally solve the aviation emissions problem, and will not be the solution that airlines want. I can’t imagine my job - or many jobs - getting done with one long-haul flight each year. But we could reduce our flying and emissions from air travel an awful lot. Whatever gains can be achieved through behaviour, policy, and technical changes in different sectors will be important.

So now a challenge for 2010: Last year more than 40,000 people flew to Copenhagen to attend the United Nations Climate Conference, COP-15. There were scientists, negotiators, students, journalists (myself included), as well as politicians, many with 20-person retinues in tow. They were there because they cared passionately about climate. Perhaps, as COP-16 in Cancun approaches this year, each of us should ask what we add, or take away, by being on site? Do we really need to fly there?

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First published in Yale Environment 360 on May 24, 2010.



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About the Author

Elisabeth Rosenthal has covered international environmental issues for the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune for the last three years, traveling extensively to report on environmental projects. Before that, she was a correspondent in the Times’ Beijing bureau for six years.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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