{"id":775,"date":"2008-04-10T17:23:20","date_gmt":"2008-04-10T17:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=775"},"modified":"2008-04-10T17:23:20","modified_gmt":"2008-04-10T17:23:20","slug":"so-im-flying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=775","title":{"rendered":"So I’m Flying"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m going to the UK in August. 24 hours in a flying tin can for me (each way). And yet. I worry about climate change<\/a>. I esteem George Monbiot<\/a>, who says not flying is the single most significant thing one can do to help avert climate change<\/a>. My moral heuristic is Kant’s categorical imperative<\/a>: do as you would have everyone do. I even co-ordinate a teaching programme about the gap between attitudes and behaviour<\/a> in the environmental context.
\nAll this, and I fly to the UK.
\nI’m going over for the wedding of one of my oldest and closest friends. If there is ever a reason to travel the world, surely this would be it?<\/em> But on the other hand, I know my friend would understand if I didn’t go. If our friendship means anything, it is respect for one anothers’ principles. Besides, I have a lot of very close friends all around the world. There will always be events of significance out there.
\nBut there are flights going all the time. What’s one seat on one flight going to do? It’s not like they’d cancel the flight if I wasn’t on it, right?<\/em> But any decision anyone makes has social consequences. If I didn’t go, then that would contribute to social perception of air travel. Me not going might nudge a few other people closer to thinking, yeah, if I’m serious about climate change I’m not going to make that sort of trip. And if they made similar decisions, so it would spread further. Me going has the opposite effect – someone whose conscience is nagging them, like mine did me, can think “well morgue always talks about climate change but he flew around the world just the same”. And maybe that will hold them back.
\nThe big problem in climate change is corporate and government activity, individual carbon output is just a sideshow and worrying about it is useless.<\/em> But corporate and government activity happens in the social matrix. All the stuff about social influence above applies here as well. The big powers will only change when there’s a mass of public sentiment demanding it, and if I believe that then isn’t it incumbent on me to be part of the demanding public?
\nWell, just buy come carbon offset and consider yourself in balance.<\/em> Maybe. I’m suspicious of carbon offset schemes because of the time lag – they promise to pay back your carbon output in the future, but the problem is worsening now and timescales for change are short.
\nSo am I a hypocrite? Yeah, I think I am. And there’s not much I can do about that except acknowledge it. So bear it in mind whenever I talk about this stuff – I’m just an ordinary hypocrite like everyone else. And I’m sure looking forward to the UK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m going to the UK in August. 24 hours in a flying tin can for me (each way). And yet. I worry about climate change. I esteem George Monbiot, who says not flying is the single most significant thing one can do to help avert climate change. My moral heuristic is Kant’s categorical imperative: do … Continue reading So I’m Flying<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything-political"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-cv","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}