When we published that we are going to travel half the world we not only got positive feedback on our plans. Some of our friends were concerned about safety or how we manage to school Lily while traveling, some were questioning whether our engagement to save the climate and traveling the world would not be a contradiction. This was one of the more sarcastic comments we’ve got:
Your travel is certainly carbon dioxide-neutral. As it is for all people who are seeking „experiences“ and at the same time support Greta’s concerns.
Does that sound somehow familiar to you? In the past months the anti-flying movement „flygskam“or „flight shaming“ in English has now spread well beyond its native Sweden and has become a significant phenomenon. Passenger numbers at airports in Sweden are declining and the trend is catching on around the world. Whether it’s for business or pleasure, air travel is responsible for nearly 3% of all global carbon emissions – and this is expected to grow at a rate of 3.5% per year.
So we were asking ourselves, how much will our trip affect the climate? We calculated the carbon footprint for all our flights to get from Europe to Asia and Australia and back for the five of us on atmosfair. The result was quite scary and really eye-opening. It is almost the same amount of carbon dioxide an average European emits in one year including food, clothing, heating, appliances, light, mobility etc.
So how does traveling halfway around the world and environmental thinking go together? Well, we care about the environment and we do our best to avoid waste and reduce our carbon footprint. We just ordered a plug-in hybrid car for the time when we get back from our travel to drive the majority of our trips emission-free. We managed to ban plastic from our bath room e.g. by substituting shampoo and soap bottles with eco-friendly soap bars. Don´t we have to stop traveling in airplanes to save the planet?
To us there are many good reasons for traveling. We have written another blog post about it.
We nowadays see a rise in hate rhetoric and hate crimes all over Europe and many other countries in the world. Root cause of this terrifying trend is the „refugee wave“ which hit the borders of Europe and North America following the war in Syria, due to terrorism in the Middle East or extreme poverty in Africa and Central America.
The collective answer of the politic leaders in the EU and in the USA to the immigration problem is to stop the flow of people by either financing refugee camps outside Europe, by shutting down borders, by stopping to rescue people from drowning in the Mediterranean sea or by building walls in the US. Meanwhile, most researchers forecast that human migration will further increase in the future, e.g. due to effects of global warming. As populations will become more and more diverse than nowadays isn´t it logical to look at it and try to understand?
To us it makes more sense anyway to explore the world beyond our own borders and to expose ourselves to other people and cultures than spending our precious time demonstrating against illegal immigration. We choose to adapt to a reality. We try to be unbiased, have open eyes and be tolerant. Shaming people for availing themselves of travel opportunities is just another way of turning inward and isolating ourselves. That´s against our nature. We rather build bridges than walls.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
Mark Twain
Today we have access to the internet 24/7 and a dozen global news channels on TV in our living room, still many effects of climate change and other environmental issues we are not very concerned about as we are comfortable living in silos and the issues happen distant from us in places we cannot even pronounce. Learning about climate change in school or watching a documentary about the pollution of our oceans in TV stays often abstract. But when we witness it with our own eyes we start becoming emotionally involved, we get a deeper understanding. Will our children ever forget about the palm tree plantations and orang utan rescue projects or the polluted beaches of the tourist areas in Asia? Hopefully the insights they gain during our trip will grow their understanding of climate change and will help them to start seeing the world in a new way.
Well… in a perfect world, airplanes would emit nothing but good vibes and love into the air. But the truth is, when traveling with a family of five it is unfortunately not an option to take a sailboat to the other side of the world. Greta’s lengthy journey by sailboat to visit the UN headquarters in NYC was a symbolic act which was meant to raise public attention to the global warming problem. Put in practice, using sailboats for traveling is unrealistic for the vast majority of people. We don´t think that going backwards in time can be a solution to the problems associated with global warming.
So what is the solution? Today, we live in times when a lot of people actually deny that global warming exists. Despite the fact that 98% of climate scientist say so! And there are the plain facts. The government of Indonesia e.g. has decided to relocate its capital Jacarta to Borneo in the interior of another island, because the city is seriously threatened to sink into the Javan sea.
For us it seems to be ever more important to educate ourselves and our children. What we need is a learning culture, hands-on studies and more people with scientific mindsets who study carefully, look into details, describe the facts, experiment, share knowledge and act with reason.
Coming back to the headline, can traveling the world and saving the climate coexist? We think so. We believe that education is the key. We can only solve the issues which human kind faces today by increasing our level of education. We need to constantly learn, experiment, try the impossible, while raising our own and others awareness to overcome walls (real ones or the invisible ones in our minds).
I’ve never tried that before, so I’m completely sure I can do it.
Pippi Longstocking
We are not perfect, we do not do everything 100 % right. But we think this world needs rather 1 million people who live their best conscious life and be as kind to the earth as possible than just 100 people doing everything 100 % right. It is about taking the first step and going in the right direction.
So instead of staying at home we thought about how we can reduce our carbon footprint while traveling. We learned that there are many conscious decisions and steps you can take.
Here you can find our tips to make your travel around the world more sustainable.
