Now Reading
Climate change: Can a halt to air travel bring joy and happiness?

Climate change: Can a halt to air travel bring joy and happiness?

A former teacher who now runs a climate organization from Burlington, Vermont, Dan Castrigano says that he had always enjoyed traveling, but eventually became worried about his carbon footprint. 

He tried first buying carbon offsets. He eventually decided to stop flying.

This is Why We Did It

A small but growing number have given up flying due to climate concerns. The joy they experienced on the journey is what surprised them.

“There was this cognitive dissonance when I would fly,” he says. “I was teaching about climate to seventh and eighth graders, and I just kind of became embarrassed that I was flying to Europe for vacation.” 

With more people recognizing the climate impact of the aviation industry, and more people interested in lowering their own carbon footprints, a new ethos of “slow,” climate-friendly travel is taking hold. And those at the forefront of this movement – travelers like Mr. Castrigano who have pledged to go “flight free” for a year or more – claim that their new approach from getting here to there is surprisingly fun.

Waking up on a sleeper train to an Indiana sunrise en route to Chicago is just better than fighting the crowds at O’Hare International Airport, Mr. Castrigano says.

“It’s extremely joyful not to fly,” he says. “It’s liberating.”

Jack Hansen was a junior at University of Vermont when he last flew in an airplane. He flew from Denmark to get back from a semester in Copenhagen. He stopped in Iceland and landed in New York. 

The next term, however, one of his professors questioned students about their energy usage. And when Mr. Hansen did the math, he realized that just one leg of that international flight accounted for more energy, and more greenhouse gas emissions, than all the other things he had done that year combined – the driving and heating and lighting and eating and everything else.

He was stunned.

This is Why We Did It

A small but growing number have given up flying due to climate concerns. The joy they experienced on the journey is what surprised them.

“I just couldn’t justify it,” he says. “It really is an extreme. It’s an extreme amount of energy, an extreme amount of pollution.”

So Mr. Hansen decided that he would stop flying. This was in 2015. He has been traveling by train, bike, car, and even wrote a song about the challenges of returning to Chicago via overnight bus. He has never been on an airplane.   

View Comments (0)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.