Guilty flying

I both love and hate flying.  I’ve always always been a window seat flyer. Regardless of how many people I have to disturb on my way to the loo, and the feeling of being trapped that make some people opt for the aisle, I have always chosen a window seat.  The absolute best part of flying is the view out of the window. I hate with a passion the requirement, which has grown more prevalent over time, to keep the shades down on long haul flights. To miss the sunrise over exotic landscapes seems criminal to me, but the reflected light on screens disturbs the movie watchers and the crew prefer us to be happily distracted or asleep. 

That view out of the window invariably rewards me with a sense of awe. I love the patterns and colours of the natural and wild, and the social geography of the landscapes. the patterns we impose by the way we live. I have always been drawn towards aerial photography, loving the work of our West Australian photographer Richard Woldendorp. And the Canon sponsored trio whose names I forget who flew and photographed the entire coastline of Australia in a 4 seater plane. 

As for the hate part, it’s more guilt than hate. I have been feeling guilty about flying now for years. I just can’t square it away from an environmental perspective. My first move in response to this guilt, years ago now, was to carbon offset my flying with Carbon Neutral, a charitable group in Perth engaged in tree planting. I was always suspicious of the few dollars that we can opt to add to our online flight booking to offset our flights. They seemed far too cheap to me, and besides I wanted the cost of carbon offsets to hurt the bottom line a bit. 

Stay with me now, if you’ve got this far. This is a difficult topic and as someone newly returned form Antartica I’m leaving myself wide open to well justified pointing of the finger and pronouncements of hypocrisy. But I know I am not alone. All of us have gaps between what we know, value and believe to be right, and what we actually do. And I am not alone in the guilty flying either. It is not an easy topic of conversation, particularly for Australians living on an island continent.

My business as usual work life

It has been extremely difficult to make the changes required to adequately address my guilt. My whole business model has been built around flying to Europe, to New Zealand, frequently to Melbourne and to other Australian states. It is a business as usual setup that has been difficult to budge. I often joked in regard to my Melbourne travel that I was a FIFO worker (Fly In, Fly Out worker, an arrangement common in our state for mining personnel). Melbourne was just a much more desireable destination than the Pilbara or Goldfields. But I know this is not a sustainable model, for the planet or me. I finish each work year close to burnout, and have become increasingly aware of the downsides.

Over the last few years I have slowly managed to reduce travel, and I ambivalently celebrated when I lost Gold frequent flyer status with Qantas almost two years ago. It was a landmark event that I knew needed to happen but I was loathe to lose any of the privileges I’d enjoyed and become accustomed to over time. And of course it’s not only work travel. I’m sure you’ll have noticed the number of flights required to get to, and back from, Antartica.  More guilt, more hypocrisy. In the interests of full disclosure we have done 10 flights, PER-MEL-SYD-SCL- BA-USH, then MVD-SCL-MEL-CBR-SYD-PER. Not all of them planned! That is going to take some working out on the Carbon Neutral carbon offset calculator.

For years I thought the problem of too much flying would be solved by increasing prices. As we ran out of oil I expected flying would get prohibitively expensive. But of course, as we as a society were prepared to extract fossil fuels from more and more environmentally fragile places and take greater risks in extracting it, the opposite happened. Flying became cheaper. So much for that solution.

I noticed in my social circles, and also in the chit chat of people on the courses I ran, how much we define ourselves by the places we’ve been and the places we’re going. The idea of a bucket list became firmly entrenched in our lexicon and we’ve chased after ever more exotic, next big thing, travel destinations. I also noticed how we use travel as a reward for the overwork we do. We need to have a break in that exotic destination, we deserve it. Yes, I know, hypocrite alert! I became slightly appalled about how I could and did opine about the various frequent flyer programs, the virtues of flying in the evening or morning to Europe, who has direct flights to Auckland, different aircraft models, seat preferences and so on. I know way way too much about flying. 

Fast forward to COVID 19 and the empty airport scenes we have just witnessed. Who could have imagined the risks of our planetary mobility, the subsequent collapse of international and domestic travel, and the resulting relief for the environment from hitting the flying pause button. 

There seems to be an acknowledgement, at least from the Qantas staff we spoke to, that flying will not return to business as usual. Qantas ground staff, security screening personnel, flight attendants, all turn out to be quite a chatty lot when not so pressed for time! As we all become more proficient at online mediums for communication, will work travel become less frequent? I’ve already seen examples of academic conferences that seemed to work perfectly well online.  As airlines collapse will travel become more expensive and more of a luxury? Will we all want to stay closer to home? Will we view the risks of travel differently, have more imagination about what can go wrong? I joked the other day that if someone coughed in China I’d be on the first flight home. 

Flying is embedded in my life

As I unpacked from our Antartica trip of three weeks that became six, I became aware of just how embedded travel is in my life. I’d planned the trip to be book-ended by work in Melbourne and it therefore contained elements of my habitual FIFO work arrangements. I have worked hard to get travel down pat, to make it as comfortable and stress free as possible.

I have special categories of clothing that I wear on the plane, comfy and hopefully not too daggy, a pile of books set aside for plane reading, my pressure socks for long distance flights, my variably sized collection of rolley suitcases for different types of trips, my special travel shoulder bag where my phone, iPad, and computer fit nicely, a special collection of technology that travels with me, including rechargers and various country adaptors, a permanent toiletries bag, a collection of SIM cards, transport swipe cards and currencies from various countries saved and ready for future trips, and even a hook on the side of the cupboard where I hang my clothes as I start preparing to pack for the next trip. Not to mention the collection of ‘stuff’ left at Nicky and Stuart’s place in Melbourne, which at one time included a folding bike, helmet and pannier. You get the drift. I was a bit taken aback by how much I had built around my travel, and the number of possessions it entailed.

When I unpacked from our Antartica trip and the work trip that did not go to plan, I unpacked as if I wasn’t going to travel again in the foreseeable future. I actively dismantled my travel routines. I disappeared all of my suitcases, including those that handily lived under my desk. They are now in the top cupboard taking a breather, maybe to become little used markers of a pre COVID 19 travelling ethos. 

Of course I will travel again, and I am hopeful that some of the postponed Melbourne work may still come to fruition. However bringing some focussed attention to this whole chunk of my life has been illuminating. It’s served to loosen the scaffolding that holds my business as usual work model in place, and brought it into sharper relief. Next time I fly I will do it intentionally rather than habitually.

I haven’t found guilt or blame to be great motivators for change. Equally the flight shaming that is (was?) happening in Europe has provoked a backlash. But maybe some focussed attention on those areas of our lives, and I’m not just talking about flying here, where substantial gaps exist between our beliefs and values, and our actions. And in order to do an honest accounting it helps if we can talk about it honestly with each other.

There are aspects of our lives that we’ve had to give up, temporarily, for COVID 19. The question is, have we hit the pause button only to return to our business as usual models as soon as possible? Or does this present an opportunity for us to dismantle aspects of our lives that are profoundly unhelpful for our planetary system and wellbeing?  I dont have easy answers, as you can tell, but it is worth having the conversations.