To fly or not to fly

A cracking piece from Robert Green in Intelligent life who asks as95% of the world’s population has never been on a plane. Do the rest of us have a right to fly?

An emotive subject no doubt and as he writes

When it comes to flying, we split between those who believe asking individuals to rethink their choices is a bit impractical (ie, completely impossible) and those who believe, things being what they are, that there’s no longer a choice

But the disproportionalety of it is astounding.There are 2billion flights every year taken by 335m people with aviation adding 3.5 per cent of the CO2 to the atmosphere.

As Robert concludes

From one end, not-flying is an absurd gesture that will make no difference. From the other, cutting back on flying is probably the single biggest step you can take to shrink your carbon footprint. It’s a question of how we view politics. For Gandhi, the personal was always political, but for the rest of us the gap between the two is often about 30,000 feet.