Open if you've ever been paralysed overthinking the sustainability of a tiny individual choice
Because SAME.
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Anyone else experienced this feeling?
I have been standing here for centuries.
I’m in a supermarket aisle - or no, maybe I’m in a café? Or perhaps I’m at home, shopping online. Please review your order before proceeding to payment.
And I review my choice. Again and again. I am paralysed.
No matter what, I feel guilty. Guilty guilty guilty, like every action I take is a transgression against nature - maybe it is. God, living like this is criminal - as unwilling accomplices in the crime of a millennia.
All this climate guilt about our individual choices, it is an inevitable symptom of trying to do least harm in an economic and social system that makes it nearly impossible to win.
Because we have been asked to achieve the unthinkable. To rearrange every part of the status quo and be the tipping point between a crumbling world, and a fierce new future. No pressure.
How much easier it is to philosophise about the ‘right’ choice than to simply make a choice, any choice, and sit with the discomfort of the sacrifice we’ve made - whether time, money, carbon emissions.
How much easier to point out all the things that must change in the system to accommodate sustainability, than to turn the microscope lens on myself and ask ‘how much more time will I invest in frustration and overthinking the things I can’t change right now, rather than the changes I can?’.
And like any other symptom, we must not ignore the guilt or tell ourselves it will pass. There is one cure and that is to address the core of this social malaise. By directing the bulk of our time, energy, love and rage towards those who have the power to make the safe, green and fair options the only options.
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What’s Going On?
We can halve emissions by 2030 - and this is our last opportunity to do so, says new IPCC report.
Related: What does the latest IPCC report actually say?Indigenous land rights are critical to containing global heating to 1.5 degrees.
Related: Four ways indigenous lands reduce emissions.Transforming our food system is an untapped opportunity to slash emissions, study finds.
Useful: What is the ‘food system’ exactly?Wind and solar energy are reaching record levels - but so are coal emissions.
Useful: How can we phase out coal in time to limit warming?UN biodiversity talks fail to agree on any targets to protect wildlife.
Related: At least Ecuador is doing something about it.Microplastics have been found in human lungs for the first time.
Related: But I don’t want to be breathing in plastic…
Focus On… Slow Travel
Monday last week. Four deadlines and about 3 emails that said ‘Cass could you do this urgently please’. But I couldn’t.
Because I had 15 internet tabs open, desperately trying to find a flight-free option to get from Belgium to Barcelona. My grim options were between a 20-hour coach journey or a €250 train journey. Or, of course, a flight for one hour and €70.
Being a Gen-Z slacktivist, I took to the internet to make my choices for me.
Those of us dedicated to building a more sustainable world are often trapped in an endless cycle. Feeling guilty for our own imperfect life choices, and then frustrated at the time spent feeling guilty when we know full well that corporations are chugging out 70% of carbon emissions.
But none of this philosophising and angst helps me actually, uh, decide. So, back to Instagram - and LinkedIn too, to see what people said.
And they said a lot. But the same points came up again and again.
How do I best invest my time and money?
€250 is a lot of money. 20 hours is a lot of hours. A flight is a lot of carbon emissions. Just by living as a human on this planet, I will end up spending that amount of money, that amount of time, emitting those greenhouse gases. The question is, where is that time and money best invested?
I still struggle to travel mainly by train or coach as it requires considerable time and money investment.
I know reduced emissions now is better than ‘capture’ later, but given the big cost difference, would the money have made more impact somewhere else?
Just take a plane and invest in other things. The world is fucked up. No need for us to suffer.
I work in climate justice advocacy. How can I say that 20 hours of me sitting on a coach is more impactful than 20 hours of me working on my job?
Then again, I said to my housemates who had the misfortune to walk into the room, I once worked from a luggage rack on a train so it’s not that I can’t do both. But isn’t shoving myself into the baggage to avoid a plane a bit… mad?
What is affordable and available to me?
I went to university 5-6 hours away from my hometown. The train back would cost £70 (~€83) one-way. I asked my friend, also from my hometown, how she managed to visit home. She said ‘You don’t. You’re stuck here haha.’ She wasn’t joking.
Now I live in Belgium. It is only about 6 hours on the train between my current town and my hometown. But the cost of train travel means I have been, in practise, very far away for my entire adult life.
You can’t take a train if you can’t afford it. Can’t take a bus if there are no buses. Can’t make travel plans if the staff are always striking because they’re not even paid a fair wage.
I chose to take the train from Reading to Glasgow for COP26 last year (despite most of my friends and contacts saying "why don't you just fly?"). It was a straightforward enough journey (If you don't count the 5-6 hour delays!!) but much more expensive (again, if you don't count the delays - they were so bad I ended up being refunded). I recognise that many don't have the privilege that I had to be able to choose to take longer and spend more.
I’m going to the Netherlands and faced many issues. It’s on a bank holiday so no trains from London to the North-West at all. So an 8-hour journey would be over 10 hours and extremely expensive. I thought I might get the overnight ferry and then the train, but then P&O fired all their staff and I didn’t want to give my money to them. So I’m flying and feeling major flygskam about it.
Somehow even travel management companies are lagging behind in terms of booking flight free travel and finding the most efficient, low carbon and cost friendly way.
How ironic that the lowest-carbon travel options seem exclusively available to those rich in time and money - the same social group that are creating the bulk of carbon emissions around the world.
I pondered my situation. Could I really afford that train? Could I really afford to spend a day on the coach? Could I afford not to?
What is my mindset to travel?
One striking thing is that everyone who messaged with their flight struggles were describing trips that were important to them.
I committed to completely cut down on flying in summer 2019 but not to quit completely. My brother and his family live in New Zealand and I have never been out to see them, but definitely want to go one day and flying is the only viable option.
I live in the UK but my family are in western US so unfortunately I cannot be a complete me without transatlantic flying.
I have felt guilty in the past for travelling to see my grandmother in the USA.
Brought into a hyper-globalised world, it is not so simple to cut off international flights based on our environmental principles. Our work, families, and relationships are stretched across the globe.
We don’t just think global. We work, live and love global. And barring love and opportunity because of distance seems just as counterintuitive to basic human values as destroying the land we live on.
To create a sustainable travel sector, we must balance the tension between our current globalised society and economy, and the need to slow down and reconnect and relocalise. Sounds paradoxical, but is it?
Could we not harness the good that globalisation has brought us - the diversity, the knowledge and cultural transfer, the rapid spread of solutions and innovation - and also recognise that we must value not just what is Here and what is at our Destination, but every place in between?
How inclusive are flight-free options?
As a black woman, I would advise not going off the beaten track or certainly not on my own. Pre-Covid, I decided to travel from a meeting in Evian down to Annecy in France. Turns out I had to change from train to bus..... in the middle of nowhere.
When trying to board the bus in the middle of the day, the BUS DRIVER started asking me questions about my immigration status and also the other person of colour (black guy) who was right behind me in line to board the bus.
The bus driver was convinced we must be together and both illegal migrants. NEVER AGAIN. I was actually very concerned for my personal safety. I'm partially sighted and so can't drive (no depth vision).
Armed with the privilege of being a middle-class white and able-bodied person, and an obsessive need to save money, I have been stuck next to pushy drunk men on the metro at 1am and I have faked phone calls walking home in the night-time.
Pre-planes, travelling long-distance was often dangerous or even impossible for women, people of low income, BIPOC identities, people with disabilities - heck, it still is. It is not enough to toss in a coach option and call it a day, it must be as accommodating and inclusive as the society that will use it.
So now what?
In the end, I split the journey into two coaches and a train. Maybe I think it’s the best or most ethical choice. Maybe I just feel the pressure of accountability that comes with preaching climate activism to an audience.
Or maybe I feel that the time I spend agonising over our micro-choices is not just a drain of time, energy and faith in humanity, it is also a twisted comfort zone.
I cannot make the ‘wrong’ choice if I am in decision paralysis. I cannot do harm if I do nothing. I can’t do anything. I don’t have to address the pressure of finding the right words for an advocacy campaign if I’m busy inflating the importance of my travel choices. I don’t have to rewrite this post for a fifth time and grapple with the self-doubt and self-criticism, if I’m micro-analysing the options on Flixbus and Blablacar.
In the end, it’s personal. Of course it is. It’s about the burden we choose. But now I’ve decided and I am cut free again: free to focus on the activism that might - if I get it right - bring at least a little joy and justice.
Would you take the plane, coach or train? Share your own struggles with slow travel in today’s discussion thread.
So Now What Do I Do?
LEARN
Sign up to one of the upcoming Climate Conversations to deal with eco-anxiety, on the 18th and 30th April.
Tune into this webinar on how to link the struggle of the cost of living and the climate crisis on 19 April.
Tune in to this jargon-free Climatalk webinar on the current trend of climate litigation on 29 April.
TRY SOMETHING NEW
Calling photographers! The UN is seeking entries for its World Oceans Day photo competition. Deadline 15 April.
Check out the amazing event line-up for Fashion Revolution Week on the 18th - 24th April.
Young writers - submit your essay on ‘My Values’ for the Goi Peace Prize by the 15th June. Cash prizes available.
CHANGE THE SYSTEM
Find out what’s happening near you for Earth Day, on the 22nd April.
Apply to join Youth & Environment Europe as a COP27 volunteer! Deadline 22nd April.
Nominate someone who is doing incredible work to build a sustainable and just future for the SDG Awards. Deadline 1st May.
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