In August 2019, Greta Thunberg
embarked on a journey from the UK to the U.S.
aboard a zero-emissions race boat.
Her expedition shed light on the impact of commercial aviation
on climate change.
In 2018, international air travel
accounted for 2.4% of global CO2 emissions
from fossil fuel use.
To put this into perspective,
in 2018 commercial aviation
emitted almost as much CO2
as Germany and the Netherlands combined.
My name is Dan Rutherford.
I'm the aviation program director
at the International Council on Clean Transportation.
We analyzed the global dataset of aircraft operations in 2018.
And what we found is that overall commercial aviation
emitted more than 900 million metric tons of CO2.
So treated as a country, it would be
the sixth-largest emitter of fossil CO2.
And we found that emissions overall
are growing much faster than we originally expected.
The business as usual projection is that aviation CO2 emissions
will triple by mid-century
but that assumes about 3 percent growth per year.
Our report actually suggests about 5.7 percent growth.
So tripling is probably on the low end of what we'd expect.
If you’re worried about climate change,
these alarming findings certainly make you more aware
of your own flying habits.
If you’re a frequent flyer, you might even feel guilty.
In Sweden,
they actually have a word for that —
flygskam.
It's a compound of flyg, flight,
and skam, which is shame, obviously,
and historically the same words as the English ones.
It means, basically, the guilt you feel about your flying habits
and the impact they have on climate change.
My name is Ola Karlsson.
I'm a language advisor at the Swedish Language Council
in Sweden.
We publish a list of new words around Christmas every year
and flygskam was one of around
30 or 40 words that we published in 2018.
We want to pick words that say something about the past year
and reflects the developments of society and
a recent phenomenon in society.
Many people say that language in itself
does not affect our thinking, but
but I think that sometimes words and new words like flygskam can
convey some kind of message
and indirectly influence opinions.
And I mean, at least in Sweden,
flying has decreased.
It's commonly supposed that flight shame
and indirectly the expression itself plays a part in that.
In Sweden, the number of passengers embarking
on domestic flights
decreased by 3.4 percent in 2018.
In the same year,
SJ, a state-owned train operator,
carried two million more passengers than the year before.
Cutting back on air travel by swapping planes for trains
might be the best way forward —
but it might not always be realistic.
We wanted to find out
whether there are other steps that we can take
when there is no alternative to flying.
But first of all,
who, if anyone,
should be ashamed of flying, really?
It turns out that most of the world does not fly,
and that a disproportionate amount of the flying is done
by a relatively small group.
So in countries like the UK and the United States,
typically, about 15 percent of the population
takes about 70 percent of the flights.
So if you're in that group,
then probably you should be thinking about
changing your behavior.
So what can we do to reduce our carbon footprint when flying?
Just saying you shouldn't be guilty about flying
doesn't mean you shouldn't be taking other actions
to fly more efficiently.
The bad news is that the data is all available
for the airlines to allow us to directly choose
more fuel-efficient flights.
However, they're not currently disclosing that data
to the consumer.
The good news is that even if you don't have that data,
there are certain tricks you could use to fly more efficiently.
And I call it flying like a “nerd” —
N.E.R.D. —
and that acronym stands for New,
Economy,
Regular,
and Direct.
New refers to trying to fly on newer aircraft.
So, generally, the fuel efficiency of aircraft
improve from generation to generation.
And an aircraft like the A320neo
or the 787 Dreamliner
will be about 15 percent more fuel-efficient
than an older aircraft.
So if you can and you know the numbers for a new aircraft,
you can try and book your ticket on them.
Flying economy when you do fly
will improve the fuel efficiency.
If you're sitting in the back of the plane,
there are more seats there and also
the load factor is higher,
so more of the seats are full in the back
than in premium seating.
Regular is the little bit of the tricky one.
Generally, there are multiple aircraft sizes
and the most fuel-efficient sizes are the single-aisle
and the small twin-aisle aircraft.
Those tend to be large enough to be fuel-efficient,
but small enough to only have two engines.
So if you fly in very small regional jets
or very large aircraft that have four engines,
then you'll burn more fuel.
So try to stick with the regular-sized aircraft.
And direct is pretty straightforward.
Layovers tend to take you away from the great-circle distance
that goes directly from your origin airport
to your destination airport.
So whenever you can, you try to fly direct
to reduce your carbon emissions.
These four rules, this “flying like a N.E.R.D.,”
can be helpful for individuals who don't have access to data
to choose lower carbon flights.
But it's really important that airlines
and then governments
move in the direction of better data disclosure.
And there is an example actually in Sweden.
So recently, there's been a proposal for airlines to disclose
the carbon intensity of their flights within Sweden.
So that's, I think, a good example
of a government that's taking positive steps in this direction.
I think it's important to remember that flying shame
started out with a group of people that were concerned
about their own behavior —
wanted to change their own behavior
to, sort of, set a model for how others might act.
It's not "flight shaming,"
it's not “you’re bad because you take a flight,”
it's “I want to prove that I can reduce my carbon footprint.”
Reducing your flying
or trying to fly more efficiently
is a way as an individual,
you can show that you're committed
to these larger societal causes.