Re: taking less flights : Thu Jan 16, 2020 10:34 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

its yet another rich-bashing exercise and the usual suspects on here have waded in.

Utter codswallop.

If there really is a serious climate emergency, and flights are contributing to it, EVERYONE is going to have to cut back.

Re: taking less flights : Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:59 pm  

Cronus wrote:

I'll be interested in hearing what this 'Flashman' has to say. In the meantime, I'll give my view.

All the government has done is defer payment of Flybe's APD bill, which was the crux of the issue in the first place. They're not throwing cash at them, though as part of the agreement Flybe's owners (including Virgin) will provide a relieving cash injection. Seems a reasonable outcome for a mostly viable airline - which many other the others lost recently weren't.

Sally - I can tell you now, "execs who see 'frequent travel' as a perk of the job" are few and far between. A cycle of airports, flights, taxis, hotels, meetings, conference, airports, flights, taxis, hotels gets VERY tiresome VERY quickly. Most of the time travel is a necessary evil. Those flying Business Class, taking limos and staying at top hotels might enjoy some of the perks, but the vast majority are in economy, taking taxis and staying in the cheapest reasonable standard hotel they can find, all the time counting the hours until they get home.

I do agree with you that people taking multiple flights a year is an issue. A 2-week holiday, a stag do, a weekend city break, Lapland at Xmas, and the rest. Some youngsters I know will 'do Ibiza' twice a summer. Of course some business flyers are equally guilty - I couldn't tell you how many flights I've taken for conferences and training courses across Europe and North America, most of which were not necessary at all. Some conferences can be useful, however I would certainly question the need for many.

And it's not just corporations. The volume of travel at universities and other academic institutions might surprise you. The biggest UK universities EACH spend between £10-14m a year on travel, of which approx £6-8m is on flights. Mid-sized universities are each spending £6-10m a year of which approx £3-6m is flights. There are a lot of universities. Is all of that 'necessary'?

The problem for businesses is that while Skype and the like have their place, in reality they deliver blo0dy awful and awkward meetings and there's a reason face-to-face remains the preferred option by a country mile.

Anyway back to Flybe. I'd have to check but I believe the nature of Flybe's smaller aircraft means they emit fewer GHGs per seat km than most commercial aircraft, certainly than older legacy aircraft. Airlines are working and investing as quickly as possible to decrease their carbon footprint, from using biofuels to hybrid or fully electric engines, electric airport vehicles, carbon offsetting programmes, carbon-neutral HQs and other initiatives, they know they need to improve enormously or face a backlash - which has already been seen in low numbers in some Scandi countries.

But there's a very long way to go and in the meantime if we're serious about emissions we need to ask whether the perpetual drive for economic growth is a positive, as it means more aircraft, more routes, ever expanding airports and all their associated emissions. Similarly, do we simply allow more and more leisure routes? My belief is airline routes must at some point be limited and schemes to limit and punish frequent flyers introduced. An steeply increasing FF tax for each flight taken in a year, for example.

Flybe are a pretty small airline but for those who use them, they are essential. They fly to and between destinations not available with most other carriers. For a short period I had to travel to Southampton a couple of times a month. Flybe were a godsend. I've also used them to overseas destinations not available by air from my departure point with anyone else. For those who rely on Flybe, they are more important than Thomas Cook. TUI and Jet2 and the rest are filling Thomas Cook's shoes (just as they did with Monarch) whereas the loss of Flybe would leave a damaging void in many areas.

And it's not just flying between small destinations - they also provide connectivity into some key international hubs, with onward codeshare agreements on some major international scheduled carriers. Other regional airlines have been lost in recent years, it makes sense to retain Flybe if possible.

What will become interesting, over the term of the current Parliament, is whether The Tories actually take climate change seriously.
The major difficulty is that ANY government is always trying to be in a position to win the next election, thinking only about working "for the next 5 years" and as such, the difficult decisions to help reduce our carbon emissions will always be overlooked, in favour of securing an election victory.

IMO there is absolutely no doubt that the climate emergency will only be properly addressed when it's too late (bit of a contradiction there) and people like Trump and Johnson have no intention of making the difficult choices.

We need to breed less and consume less and better protect the worlds resources but, unfortunately, Capitalism ALWAYS wins.

It will be interesting to see just where things are at the turn of the next century, perhaps by then we will have found a new planet to inhabit ?

Re: taking less flights : Thu Jan 16, 2020 1:21 pm  

The tories won’t take climate change seriously, Donald trump won’t let them.

Of course business will continue to fly, you cannot grease palms on skype and FaceTime.

Re: taking less flights : Thu Jan 16, 2020 5:06 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

People especially families go abroad for two reasons - the weather and cost. Two week in a hotel with a pool in the Lake district would be financially prohibitive - Centre parcs anyone!! The weather is very unpredictable too and anyone who has had kids nothing worse than miserable kids on what is supposed to be the highlight of their year.

I agree about business flights - many are completely unnecessary - but if you want to win work - Skype simply doesn't cut it. Its OK for internal communications and updates but that's it.

How did Britons ever cope before being able to take their holidays in Aya Napa

The point I'm making is not that businesses should never fly, but to disincentivise the unnecessary ones.

Cronus' point about universities is a case in point, and sums up my gripe about people going to 'conferences'. I bet a lot of academics travel is on these conference rubbish. It's all about 'prestige' in 'presenting a paper' at a foreign location. All they do is give a powerpoint about their research, then you get a panel session of self-important experts pontificating on some topic before everyone goes away and eats the buffet lunch and does networking, ie hobknobbing with someone they want to suck up to, or chatting someone up while their wife is safely back home.

At least our carbon footprint discussing this issue on rlfans is pretty low. You can guarantee there are some climate change academics flying around the world to talk about this same issue at a conference.

Re: taking less flights : Fri Jan 17, 2020 1:09 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

How did Britons ever cope before being able to take their holidays in Aya Napa

The point I'm making is not that businesses should never fly, but to disincentivise the unnecessary ones.

Cronus' point about universities is a case in point, and sums up my gripe about people going to 'conferences'. I bet a lot of academics travel is on these conference rubbish. It's all about 'prestige' in 'presenting a paper' at a foreign location. All they do is give a powerpoint about their research, then you get a panel session of self-important experts pontificating on some topic before everyone goes away and eats the buffet lunch and does networking, ie hobknobbing with someone they want to suck up to, or chatting someone up while their wife is safely back home.

At least our carbon footprint discussing this issue on rlfans is pretty low. You can guarantee there are some climate change academics flying around the world to talk about this same issue at a conference.

As kids we went to Morecambe and Colwyn Bay - anyone who doesn't think Torremolinas is an upgrade for a youngster doesn't understand youngsters.

How did we ever manage when we didn't mobile phones? Is the world a better or worse place for them?

I completely agree about unnecessary travel - everytime I go on holiday I come across some conference or other - in Croatia it was some cancer specialists.

Re: taking less flights : Fri Jan 17, 2020 4:41 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

As kids we went to Morecambe and Colwyn Bay - anyone who doesn't think Torremolinas is an upgrade for a youngster doesn't understand youngsters.

How did we ever manage when we didn't mobile phones? Is the world a better or worse place for them?

The problem comes when new things raise expectations that become unsustainable.

Free university tuition and generous final salary pension schemes that allow people to retire at 60 on a good income also made the world a better place.

Unfortunately there comes a point where it becomes unsustainable and strict rationing needs to be put on future generations.

Given the scale of the climate emergency we need to make serious changes in lifestyle now on things like flying and meat/dairy consumption or we will leave a very difficult situation for future generations who will not have the option just to 'carry on as usual'.

The scientific community is in a broad consensus about this. Some people just choose to ignore it because they don't want to compromise on their own lifestyle, and bury their heads in the sand with the belief "it can't be as bad as they say". Strangely these are also probably the same people who would say the country can't afford free tuition and generous final salary pension schemes because that would be super-devastating...

Re: taking less flights : Fri Jan 17, 2020 10:53 pm  

sally cinnamon wrote:

How did Britons ever cope before being able to take their holidays in Aya Napa

The point I'm making is not that businesses should never fly, but to disincentivise the unnecessary ones.

Cronus' point about universities is a case in point, and sums up my gripe about people going to 'conferences'. I bet a lot of academics travel is on these conference rubbish. It's all about 'prestige' in 'presenting a paper' at a foreign location. All they do is give a powerpoint about their research, then you get a panel session of self-important experts pontificating on some topic before everyone goes away and eats the buffet lunch and does networking, ie hobknobbing with someone they want to suck up to, or chatting someone up while their wife is safely back home.

At least our carbon footprint discussing this issue on rlfans is pretty low. You can guarantee there are some climate change academics flying around the world to talk about this same issue at a conference.

Conferences are common, but field trips, exchange programmes and research trips are a big part of it. As is the 'International Office' flying mainly to China on recruitment drives. Oh, and let's not forget paying to fly Chinese students in en masse for tours of the facilities.

However, academics also make a few quid by jetsetting around. I know of an academic who - very regularly, i.e. a couple of times a month - flies to Dubai and Bahrain, delivers lectures, then often flies back the same day, lands at about 5am and goes into his UK job at a pretty big university in the North-West.

It did explain to me why most academics are grumpy, rude, entitled, wnkers who expect the world to revolve around them and behave like spoiled brats at the slightest inconvenience.

Re: taking less flights : Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:39 am  

Cronus wrote:

Conferences are common, but field trips, exchange programmes and research trips are a big part of it. As is the 'International Office' flying mainly to China on recruitment drives. Oh, and let's not forget paying to fly Chinese students in en masse for tours of the facilities.

However, academics also make a few quid by jetsetting around. I know of an academic who - very regularly, i.e. a couple of times a month - flies to Dubai and Bahrain, delivers lectures, then often flies back the same day, lands at about 5am and goes into his UK job at a pretty big university in the North-West.

It did explain to me why most academics are grumpy, rude, entitled, wnkers who expect the world to revolve around them and behave like spoiled brats at the slightest inconvenience.

What you say may well be the case.
However, if the climate crisis is to be taken seriously, governments accross the globe will have to find ways to reduce the carbon being pumped into the atmosphere and if this means restricting flying, so be it.
For now, the issue isn't being taken too seriously and with China in particular chasing economic growth and still commissioning coal fired power stations etc, to feed their thirst for electricity, there is one hell of a long way to go.

A reduction in consumption would probably be the easiest way to reduce emissions in the short term but, the economic consequences of this would make difficult for most governments to encourage.

The "throw away" society needs to change.

Maybe the "influencers" around the planet should be advocating the hippy lifestyle, instead of promoting st1t that nobody needs

Re: taking less flights : Sat Jan 18, 2020 9:57 am  

wrencat1873 wrote:

What you say may well be the case.
However, if the climate crisis is to be taken seriously, governments accross the globe will have to find ways to reduce the carbon being pumped into the atmosphere and if this means restricting flying, so be it.
For now, the issue isn't being taken too seriously and with China in particular chasing economic growth and still commissioning coal fired power stations etc, to feed their thirst for electricity, there is one hell of a long way to go.

A reduction in consumption would probably be the easiest way to reduce emissions in the short term but, the economic consequences of this would make difficult for most governments to encourage.

The "throw away" society needs to change.

Maybe the "influencers" around the planet should be advocating the hippy lifestyle, instead of promoting st1t that nobody needs

There is no climate crisis, the planet evolves.

I do find snowflake wokes to be funny though.

Re: taking less flights : Sat Jan 18, 2020 10:16 am  

IR80 wrote:

There is no climate crisis, the planet evolves.

I do find snowflake wokes to be funny though.

More insightful stuff from the East Coast.

If the evolution of the planet means that huge numbers of it's inhabitants will die or have nowhere to live, should we sleepwalk into a difficult situation or, would it be a better idea to try and mitigate future difficulties.
I'll go for the latter but, you can close your eyes and cover your ears.
Snowflake trumps idiot all day long.