For personal decisions engaging complex dysfunctional global systems, I lack a frame of reference. Doing nothing seems wrong. But given how many consumer choices are embedded in violent, murderous, polluting systems, what would disengaging completely even look like? In 2024, it’s not even clear what “off the grid” means, never mind whether it would accomplish anything.
The obvious answer is that it has to be somewhere in the middle. But where? My most recent confrontation with this question occurs in a choice about travel and the problems of flying and climate change. I have family in the Hartford, CT area I want to visit them in April. I won’t be driving -- because I don’t have a car, because I find driving stressful and exhausting, and because I don’t want to.
A non-flying transit trip between Toronto and Hartford is about a 15-hour trip if you wanted to go straight through (about twice as long as by car). I am too old to travel for 15 hours on transit straight through, so I would have to break it up and stay over. For example, to come home, I could take two connecting buses to get from Hartford to Albany one day (via Greyhound and Peter Pan), stay over in Albany, and take a train the next day. I would incur the cost of a hotel, but I’d be saving on airfare, so that part evens out.
Lest you imagine this is totally hypothetical, in 2022 that is exactly what I did. In some ways, it was OK. Yes, I had to walk through an abandoned warehouse area in Albany to get from my hotel to a dinner place, and yes, for some reason the Albany bus station and the Albany train station are a non-trivial taxi ride apart, and yes, for various reasons the trip lacked the surprise and human interest of the much longer 400-mile transit trip I took in 2019. But hey, I got to see Albany, NY.
In other ways, it was not quite OK. For reasons to do with scheduling and traffic, my bus ride on the way down was about ten hours. It is a long bus ride. I realize people take much longer flights to go to far away places, but I also know I’m not alone in thinking a ten hour bus ride is not easy: on my visit, I met a guy who was vegan for climate change reasons, and even he was like “Whoa! A ten hour bus ride?!”
And of course, since the flight is like one hour, you’re essentially adding at least two travel days into your trip. Instead of a long weekend, it’s almost a week. I am lucky to have the kind of job where my time is often a bit flexible, and I can work on other weekend days to make up for it, but obviously there are things I’d rather be doing with those two days.
All this to say: from a personal perspective, flying would be vastly more convenient and pleasant, and not even really more expensive.
However, from a complex dysfunctional global systems perspective, flying is one of the main activities exacerbating climate change. When climate protesters say “This is an emergency! No business as usual!” I agree with them. While we obviously can’t address climate change on an individual basis, our individual activities will have to change somehow -- especially in the short term while we lack technological fixes.
Also, if governmental regulation, effective leadership, and collective action are lacking, isn’t it more responsible to step up? Even if we’re “doomed,” as some people say, the details matter. If the kids who are five today have slightly less hellish world when they’re fifty than they would otherwise, isn’t that an important goal? If Greta Thunberg’s mother can give up flying thus ending her career as an opera singer, presumably I can put up with a ten hour bus ride or two.
When I try to reason this out, I feel like I have no frame for thinking it through. I expect I am not alone in this. It’s a judgment call, but based on what? If thousands of ghost flights — empty flights airlines use to retain their take-off and landing spots — are taking off all the time, it makes no sense to consider the impact of a specific action and try to calculate consequences. Individualistic rules like “don’t harm others” don’t really help. What does the recommendation to be a virtuous person entail in such circumstances?
It feels like the transit choice is necessary and vital from one point of view, and pointlessly painful from another. Where is my third perspective to figure this out?
2 comments:
This post captures many of my frustrations! I find that I fall into the trap of making trade-offs: If I don't have a car, since I don't eat animal products, can I justify longer flights? Such thinking is a trap, and can lead to being unhelpfully judgmental when people's circumstances are not like mine.
Not on the post, but I see you recently read Convenience Store Woman. I loved it, and recently read Murata's Earthlings. I have feelings about that one! Would love to discuss sometime.
Hi Katy,
Yes 100 percent -- trade-offs are one way we're taught to think about other hard choices, so it's not surprising we deploy that mode.. even if it does ultimately feel counterproductive.
I haven't read Murata's Earthlings, only CSW. I liked it too! Strange book : )
Post a Comment