Or if you want some elaboration, keep reading.
With the oncoming apocalyptic climate catastrophe, and with no “Net Zero” way to take Ryanair to Shagaluf arriving any day soon, I decided to start this travel blog nevertheless, and write lots of words about flying planes long distances. Instead of being sensible and saying we should all stay put, I have been taking the time to show you exactly how to occupy more space on a plane, by flying Business instead of Economy, thereby individually being responsible for gluttonous excess consumption of habitat-annihilating fuel burn. But if I take a moment to think about the last remaining Polar bear, balanced on one leg atop the tip of an iceberg, by this point smaller than a typical nipple that’s been freed from clothing on a winter’s night out in Newcastle, all due to human-created climate change; do I change my mind and cancel my upcoming flights? Non, je ne regrette rien.
It’s not entirely that I just don’t care about Polar bears. It’s true that I don’t think about Polar bears on a typical day at all, but, if I ponder their extinction, anthropomorphising the sad face of a bear with a tear in its eye, I can summon some contrived empathy from the mysterious quagmire of my mind. It’s more that when I’m thinking about the last bear standing, I don’t immediately hex anyone with a boarding pass as my reflex, adamant that they are the guilty bear murderers who must face eternal damnation for their despicable sins.
Aviation currently contributes around 10% of all transport emissions globally, and transport itself stands at around 16% of total carbon emissions. It’s bad. I think aviation pollution is bad. I don’t have some hot take on how climate change might be exaggerated, or that AI will solve all problems in ways that I can’t imagine with my little human mind, or that the environment doesn’t even exist and we are all brains in vats pretending the world is real. I trust the overwhelming scientific consensus without for a moment indulging stupid ideas about the elite institutions being captured by an agenda to gaslight normal people into thinking they can’t have nice things (or whatever other nonsense if I just got the nonsense wrong!). Yet I do think you should have nice things, despite a corresponding cost, including flights in Business class to see faraway places where life is different.
I also think there is inherent good in travel, beyond self-centred and transient enjoyment, along the lines of a worldly population being less ignorant about other cultures, possibly less constrained in their ideas about how things should be done, and not so confused about why events happen at home that are downstream of global situations. Sorry bears, this means that I assume the 10% of 16% is pretty much balanced out on my judicial scales of spurious relativity, if not set soaring aloft. Look out for my projectile value judgment hitting you in the face and leaving a black eye that makes everyone think you’re a panda. But I don’t have more than an intuition about this, and I don’t trust my own intuitions to be things I should strongly encourage others to value, especially if it results in rampant polar bear eradication while I was wrong all along about everything. Does travel open the mind, or just turn you into a smug tart? You decide.
What I find bizarre, however, is the extent to which people accept having things that are not nice. I previously wrote about how Los Angeles is the worst place on Earth (aside from war zones), and mostly due to the urban environment prioritising massive highways for road transport, everywhere within the unnecessarily sprawling city dystopia. Road vehicles contribute 75% of global transport emissions. Highways destroy habitats and reduce greenery in ways that alternatives, such as tram lines, don’t have to. And I’m going to say it, Toyota Corollas are not nice things. They pollute with noise and fuel burn and, most of the time, with their junk aesthetics. I make no apology for being a snob in this regard. They congest cities so no one can actually move at a reasonable speed and non-drivers have to snake around them. They also take up space when they’re not in use (which is most of the time). They murder or injure anyone they crash into. Destroy every last one of them, annihilate the 12-lane highways with dynamite, and everything instantly becomes a bit nicer. If you don’t believe me, go to Singapore and see how a rich city can be exactly not LA, and marvel at how nice it is.
In Singapore the subway system looks utterly complete as it stands (use Apple Maps to get both Singapore and adjacent Johor Bahru into the crop and turn on ‘Public Transport’ mode for a good laugh), yet they are currently investing vast treasure chests of coin into building not one, but two new lines, with multiple branches. In Singapore even the ugliest, noisiest road flyovers are often lavishly planted with tropical foliage to polish the turd. In Singapore, buses are things you can use without tears of desperation at how your life has imploded. I will go further and say that I took bus rides for the joy of seeing Singapore from the upper deck, with no further practical use for the journey, and I’m not talking about tourist buses with a commentary. However, everyone knows Singapore is disheartening to anyone who appreciates democracy and freedom of expression, or who likes swimming in the sea without staining their towel from oil spillage, or who cannot afford to spend an entire month’s accommodation budget on one night at an Ibis Styles. It’s hard to call Singapore a utopia.
Everything comes heavy with pay-offs, but some things are mostly bad and contribute 75% of global transport emissions. Commuting to work in a Toyota Corolla every day does not offer the same stimulation and enjoyment as long-haul travel to visit places like Singapore. Many environmental projects have the pay-off mostly of initial funding; so once it exists, you’re not even asked to drastically change your lifestyle. Keeping your house warm/cool and powered with electricity feels the same when the energy source is renewable rather than from fossil fuels. Not travelling, meanwhile, doesn’t feel the same as riding an A350 to the opposite side of the planet.
Toyota has produced around 54 million Corollas, and I’m not sure if that figure even includes the Wilderness Years when they called it the “Auris” in certain markets. I’m not suggesting that every single owner should be shot in the genitals for destroying the habitats of both Polar bears and also of myself, since I often seem to be surrounded by nasty roads, while I should simultaneously receive an award for flying large planes around and then banging on about it on my blog. I promise you I would feel a tad queasy if that ludicrous situation were to arise, even if only for a moment. But I’m not going to stop flying, when the overwhelming priority for humankind should be to avoid situations of pointless harmful emissions from energy production, industry and road transport, since these are by far the biggest pollutants and none of them are necessarily lip-smackingly, bulge-engorgingly desirable things when considered in contrast to their sustainable replacements.
I don’t need to fly from Paris to Amsterdam, when there is a high-speed train that will treat me better than Transavia ever could. I’m the one constantly turning the air conditioning off, to the point that people have to hide the remote in order to avoid dehydration derived from a deluge of sweat. I don’t drive anywhere aside from the occasional holiday rental. But as much as I’m up for a lengthy and/or unorthodox journey in hot conditions, I’m not about to go back from Kuala Lumpur to London on a camel. Even though my journey will unfortunately be on a noisy old Boeing 777, I fully intend to stretch out my excessively long giraffe legs in Business class. Which is lucky, since I still can’t bend one of them due to a road accident from two months ago. I would never have been left injured if the cars hadn’t been there; creating the scenario for an accident, taking up public space, and, just for the hell of it, posing an outsized existential threat to Polar bears.
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If you hated it, come back next time to see if you hate everything I say.