755: Stefan Gössling: Busting self-serving myths about flying

This Sustainable Life

People who fly think most people fly, but it's more like a few percent. A small fraction of people fly, let alone across oceans or multiple times per year. If you fly, it's probably your action that hurts people most through its environmental impact, but you probably rationalize and justify it. Unlike many other polluting activities, most of the money you spend on flying goes to polluting, displacing people and wildlife from their land to extract fuel and minerals, and lobbying governments to pollute and extract more.

Stefan has been reporting and publishing on flying for decades longer than I've worked on it. I met him following a panel he participated in hosted by Stay Grounded on the impacts of flying on people and wildlife. That talk was on frequent flyer programs, but Stay Grounded works on many related issues.

After sharing his background, Stefan talks about his research. My biggest takeaway: People believe a lot of myths about flying. Partly the industry promotes the myths, but people will do whatever mental gymnastics they have to to accept those myths, even when they're blatantly false. Some things Stefan shares:

• Around 2 - 4 percent of people fly in a given year outside their country
• People who fly think more like half the population flies
• Flying is heavily subsidizes, so poor people help fund rich people flying
• Airports and airlines are often supported and bailed out by taxes
• Poor people are hurt more

Stefan shares more information in more detail. Despite knowing much of it, even I was outraged anew at new things I learned of how much flying hurts people and how much people who fly pay to cause more of that suffering, while telling themselves they are helping. Of course, they aren't choosing to fly from reasoning things out. They want to travel without effort, feel inner conflict at hurting people, and try to resolve their inner conflict by rationalizing and justifying their choices.

Here is the post I refer to, documenting the travels of a guy whose email newsletter I subscribe to: What do you think of this person’s flying habits? (part 1).

• Stefan's home page
• His page at Linnaeus University, including links to his recent publications.
• Some recent publications:
• Are emissions from global air transport significantly underestimated?. Current Issues in Tourism. Status: Epub ahead of print
• National tourism organizations and climate change. Tourism Geographies. Status: Epub ahead of print
• On track to net-zero? Large tourism enterprises and climate change. Tourism Management. 100. 104842-104842
• Net-zero aviation : Transition barriers and radical climate policy design implications. Science of the Total Environment. 912
• A review of air travel behavior and climate change. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews : Climate Change. 14 (1)

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