This is me in China in 1996,
on a trip to see where my family came from.
That trip was the first time that I rode in an airplane,
and the first time that I got stuck in an airport.
We've been waiting here for 9 hours now!
Air travel is one of the great privileges of living in this century.
And the number of air passengers
is expected to double in the next 20 years.
There's just one problem.
Aviation runs on oil, which contributes to global climate change.
And there's not a good alternative yet.
So individual consumers were left wondering
about their own responsibility.
These blankets represent arctic sea ice.
Alex:
Shame arises when our values don't line up with our actions.
Oh, this is so embarrassing.
Joss:
is it wrong to fly?
( theme music playing )
Okay, I want you guys to think back on the past year of your lives
and remember all of the flights you took,
both for work and for personal trips.
I have a marker for each of you.
I want you to draw all of those flights on these maps.
- ( Alex chuckles ) - Amazing.
- Let's see. - A work trip for a story.
- Cleo: DC to Detroit. - New York to New Orleans.
So, this flight right here is a trip that I took to Ireland this year,
and on the way back, we flew over the southern tip of Greenland.
And I had the window seat.
And when I looked out the window,
this is what I saw.
That is a melting ice sheet.
It's probably something I would never see
except for in a plane like this.
But the plane that I was flying in is one of the reasons
that that ice was melting in the first place.
Because air travel accounts for about 5%
of man-made global warming in a year.
- Cleo:
as more and more people in Asia to take to the skies.
Okay, well, I have all of your flight data.
- Alex: Yeah. - Cleo: Uh-oh.
I'm going to be running some calculations on this,
and I will be bothering you all very soon.
- Okay. - All right.
- Okay? All right. - All right.
( music playing )
Everyone flies for different reasons.
The four of us, we took 84 flights in the past year,
and almost half of those were for work.
The best way to find out what impact that has on the climate
is to use an online calculator
that measures the carbon footprint of each flight.
( music playing )
They ask about your connections because nonstop flights
typically use fuel more efficiently.
Something like a quarter of emissions
are from take off and landing alone,
so you don't want to do that twice
if you don't have to.
They also ask whether you flew economy,
business class, or first class,
because if you're taking up more space on the plane,
you're responsible for more of the fuel use.
The folks in first class
are causing about five times the emissions
of the economy passengers.
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
So, all of our flights led up to the equivalent
of 36.7 metric tons of CO2.
It's kinda hard to know what that means
because CO2 is invisible.
But there was a report published that shows us
how we can translate our CO2 emissions
into actual square meters of melted arctic sea ice.
What we find, I mean, that basically the observed sea ice loss
is very linearly related
to how much CO2 we keep adding to the atmosphere,
such that for about, um, every metric ton of CO2
we add to the atmosphere,
we melt another three square meters of sea ice.
You know, whenever I fly from London to New York City, for example,
that's equivalent to about a metric ton of CO2.
So then I would melt about three square meters every time I flew.
So, basically, the size of a large dinner table, I guess.
Where's Joss?
Here's Alex's.
Where are we going?
I have no idea.
Do you guys know where we're going?
- No. - I have a pretty good guess.
I heard a lot of talk about blankets.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Like picnic blankets?
- Mm. - Is there food there, is what I'm wondering.
Christophe: I don't think there is gonna be food.
No?
Welcome to the park.
How long have you been here?
I spent the night here.
- Oh, nice. - Oh, no.
- Not really. - At least you have blankets.
Yeah.
You ready to have some fun?
Uh, y-- I think so.
Okay, so, this morning
we're gonna be using our imagination.
So, these blankets are arctic sea ice.
And of course they're just blankets
that we're gonna be donating to Providence House
here in Brooklyn when we're done.
- Nice. - But for now they're sea ice.
And arctic sea ice, of course,
has been melting due to man-made global warming.
So, we'll start over here.
If you have meat in your diet for a year in the U.S.,
you melt this much sea ice.
Alex: Oh, my God.
And that is actually the square footage.
- Exactly, yes. - Wow.
If you drive a car for a year in the U.S.,
Alex, you melt this much sea ice.
- Should I roll this? - Yeah.
Okay.
Oh, this is shameful.
Whoa.
What kind of car do you drive?
I drive a Nissan Silvia.
Oh, that's devastating.
You probably drive less than the average American.
Yeah, but it only gets, like, 16 miles to the gallon.
Not great.
And this is the ice that melts
from the average American's air travel in a year.
And that doesn't seem like a lot
because it's the equivalent of just one round trip
between New York and California.
But that generates the same emissions
as around four months of driving.
But, of course, the four of us,
we are not the average flyer.
Oh, no.
So, we're gonna go over there now.
- Oof. - Ours are gonna be huge.
- Uh-oh. - ( chuckles )
- I think I see my pile. - Yeah, same.
Okay, we're gonna start with this one.
You guys want to help me fold it out?
- Yeah. - Let's just start with half.
This way, and then it goes...
- Christophe: Oh, my God. - Alex: Ooh, wow.
I was gonna say it's like the car, but this is--
- This is yours? - Joss: This is mine.
- What? - Whoa.
Oh, no.
But this isn't even, like-- this is just you flying.
- This isn't even you as an individual with-- - In a year. Right.
Okay, now let's go over and check this one out.
- It's Alex. - Alex!
- Yeah, that's me. - Joss: You did pretty good.
Still more than the average American, though, right?
Still more than the average American.
Yeah, I'm like two Americans.
Still not good.
- Okay, big boy. - Who could this be?
Oh, no!
Oh, this is so embarrassing.
- Cleo: Whee! - This just keeps going.
Well, I feel terrible.
- Okay, let's do the last one. - ( Cleo groans )
I like how the number of times it has to be folded...
- Tells you a lot. Right. - ...kind of gives us an idea.
Cleo: Oh, my God.
Alex: It's like a small whale.
Christophe: Oh, no.
Cleo: It's like a big whale.
- Well, it's a lot of ice. - It's a lot of ice.
Joss: But it's not really about any individual.
I mean...
Like, you flew all over the place for work this year.
- It is mostly work. - Yeah.
- But still. - Maybe something for Vox to think about.
Christophe: Yeah.
( music playing )
Oh, it's so heavy.
Yeah.
Oh, my bad. ( laughs )
Joss:
on 84 airplanes in the past year.
- Alex:
Do you guys know how many flights there are
in a year around the world?
- Oh, hundreds of thousands? - In a year?
There are 35 million flights around the world in a year.
Christophe: 35 million.
Which is almost 100,000 every single day.
Huh.
- So, let's go sit down over here. - Alex: Yeah.
Joss:
is that all those flights are being taken
by a minority of the world's population.
- Mm-hmm. - So, by some estimates,
only 20% of humans have ever flown on an airplane.
- Cleo: Whoa. - Wow.
And even within the U.S., only about half of Americans
fly in a given year.
It's about 12% of adults in the U.S.
that are taking 70% of the flights. People like us.
And that's where it gets into the big ethical issue with climate change,
is that the people who have used the most fossil fuels
generally have more resources
to deal with the impacts of climate change.
So we're talking about stronger storms,
more floods, more droughts, deadly heat waves.
It's really the world's poor
who are the most vulnerable,
and in most cases, we're talking about people
who have never seen the inside of an airplane.
And some people are taking this so seriously
that they're completely changing the way they travel.
Is this 16-year-old young lady
now the leader of the climate change movement?
Anchor #2:
Anchor:
to the flight shaming movement.
That is you're called out, you're shamed if you fly.
So, Joss asked me to go see Greta Thunberg arrive in New York City.
She's been sailing across the Atlantic
for the last two weeks, I think.
Her trip is a part of a larger movement called
which is Swedish for "flying shame."
And, honestly, it's kind of working.
In Sweden and other parts of Europe,
people are starting to brag on social media
about traveling by train instead of by plane.
And the data shows that in Swedish airports,
passenger counts are down as well.
Cleo: You look great.
That diagonal sail, that's her.
( crowd chanting ) Greta! Greta! Greta!
And she's about to set foot on land for the first time.
( crowd cheering )
Greta Thunberg: Well, all of this is very overwhelming,
and the ground is still shaking for me.
- ( Skype rings ) - Hey.
- Hey, Joss. - So, Umair.
You've been following the flight shame movement
as it's been developing this year.
What are some of the critiques
of the shaming approach?
Well, in order to solve climate change,
a massive global problem,
you really need to be taking big bites of the apple.
And the critique here is that focusing
on what individuals do
kind of deflects the responsibility
from the institutional actors
that really need to be making these changes.
And when it comes to Greta specifically,
she's obviously very famous for avoiding flying,
but her message is a lot broader than that, isn't that right?
- Oh, absolutely. - My message is that we'll be watching you.
The eyes of all future generations are upon you.
And if you choose to fail us,
I say we will never forgive you.
She does shame grown-ups, but not about their flying,
but about their inaction,
and I think if you are gonna shame people,
that might be the way to do it.
So, this is awkward.
In order to finish this story,
we are taking a plane to California--
a Boeing 737, which burns through
about 700 gallons of jet fuel every hour.
- Not great. - Pilot: Welcome aboard.
- Should be a nice day for flying. Thank you. - ( chimes )
So, we logged onto a site called myclimate.org
that's a nonprofit organization that helps you
calculate and offset your carbon footprint.
So we send them money,
and they will be sending it to Kenya
to help provide more efficient cook stoves
for households that would otherwise be using open fires to make their food.
I don't think that offsets our solution to climate change,
but it's a good way of acknowledging
that our consumer choices
have impacts around the world,
and our investments and donations can have impacts, too.
Can you see it?
That's the Pipistrel ALPHA Electro.
They're adorable. I mean, I just want to put
little googly eyes on the front of that thing.
It's the world's first production electric airplane.
And I'm here in Fresno to talk to Joseph Oldham,
who is a veteran pilot who played a big role
in bringing these planes to California
in order to start the country's
first electric flight training program.
Pretty amazing project.
We ran emission calculations
on the reduction in greenhouse gases
from just these four little aircraft
operating in flight training operations for a year.
And it's like reducing carbon emissions by 92 tons,
which is pretty significant
- for four little airplanes, right? - Mm-hmm.
This right here is the motor.
- Just this right here? - That.
- Just that. - Wow, it's like three inches.
Yeah, it's-- it's very small.
And then these are the battery packs.
There's two of these.
There's one up here in this front compartment,
and then there's a second compartment behind the pilot.
Joss: So, to charge up, so you have an hour of charge, you said it was $5?
- Joseph:
Joseph:
But you go to some places like Seattle,
they get all their power from hydro,
and it's six, seven cents a kilowatt hour.
( distant plane humming )
That's not an electric plane, is it?
No, it's not an electric plane, no.
- It's a pretty comfortable seat. - Joseph: It is.
Now we're basically ready to go.
- So, the plane is on now? - Yes, the plane is on now.
Oh, my gosh, it's so quiet.
- What's up? - I have to run along side you guys.
- You have to? - 'Cause the wireless range.
- Oh, it doesn't go that far. - No, not that far.
Can you just go, like, half that speed?
Okay. Sorry about that.
Okay.
That was fun.
For us. Not so much for you, huh?
- Got some exercise? - Yeah.
Joseph: Okay, loud and clear over here.
Very good.
( Joss gasps ) There he goes.
Wow, that was quick.
Joss: And besides the reduction in emissions,
what are some other benefits of having an electric motor
in an airplane?
And what do you think is the main factor
holding back sort of the improvement in the batteries
so that we can get these into bigger planes?
There he goes. Right there.
So cool.
Nice and easy.
- Hey. - Hey, how's it-- oh, is that a plane?
So, I got to go to California for this story
'cause we're looking into the future of flying,
and what I got to see there was an electric airplane.
It's just a small two-seater plane that can fly for about 80 minutes.
- Cool. - But that's on batteries alone.
- Oh, wow. - Yeah.
- No fuel? - No fuel, just--
- That's great. - Yeah, electricity.
And those batteries weigh this much.
Can you lift this?
( chuckles ) I-- I can't lift it.
Oof.
They're heavy, right?
Yeah, they're 25-pound plates.
What are you gonna do with these after?
- We're gonna return them. - Oh, thanks.
So, this weighs 106 kilograms,
which is 230 pounds.
- Metric system. I like it. - Yes.
And to fly the same distance
in a gasoline-powered version of that plane...
- Mm-hmm. - ...the fuel weighs just this much.
- Whoa. - So, when people say that fossil fuels
are really energy dense, this is what they're talking about.
- Hmm. - So, this difference
becomes really challenging when you move to bigger planes.
Yeah, I bet. Oh, that one's huge.
( laughs ) This is a Boeing 737,
which is the kind of plane I took to get to California.
- Cool. - And that trip burned about this much jet fuel,
which is made out of kerosene, it's a fossil fuel.
The same amount of energy in batteries
would take up this much space.
Ah, you couldn't even fit that on there.
I know, look at the people compared to the battery.
- It's gigantic. - Yeah.
And this battery would weigh
at least 20 times more than the liquid fuel.
And seven times more than the airplane itself.
Yeah, and for the jet fuel, it's going to burn off,
but for the batteries, they're going to stay
the same weight the entire flight.
Right, it doesn't get lighter during the flight
like the liquid fuel does.
So, the good news is that batteries are getting better.
- Nice. - Between 2008 and 2015,
the energy density of batteries nearly doubled,
and experts predict that, in about 30 years,
this plane could fly electric from New York to Chicago.
Wow.
But there's a problem.
Oh, no.
80% of emissions from airplanes
come from flights that are longer than that.
Aw, that sucks.
Is there anyone working on what's going
to happen in the future?
Is there a super battery coming up
that's going to just change the way we utilize this energy?
The battery that's sort of en vogue right now
is your lithium ion battery.
It's what's in electric cars,
it's what's in all of our cell phones.
But some researchers are looking into completely different chemistries.
So, whether it's electric planes or hybrids or biofuels,
it's just gonna be some time before we can engineer away these emissions.
And that's because our industries were built
on energy dense fuels that had been
locked underground for millions of years.
( imitates plane flying )
So, is it wrong to fly?
The short answer, from my perspective, is no.
We need mobility. We have to have mobility.
But we need to find ways of doing it
without emitting more carbon emissions.
Joss:
in a planet-sized injustice.
If I fly, if I drive, if I heat or cool my home,
if I buy stuff, if I eat stuff,
all of this now has a cost that I'm not paying.
But what's more shameful than participating
in a world that was built for fossil fuels
is doing nothing to help bring about a world that isn't.
You know, start thinking about what kinds of decisions
you're making for your society around you.
You know, should we invest more in trains
or should we create more charging infrastructure for electric cars?
Joss:
the infrastructure that you're willing to pay for.
I would say we can be judicious about how we fly.
Try to look for more direct flights,
try to minimize stopovers,
and certainly rethink flying unnecessarily
for things that we could easily replace with Skype meetings,
as we're doing right now.
Joss:
by staying on the ground.
But if I'm not part of the solution,
then I'm only part of the problem.
And, yeah, that's wrong.
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