Flight shame
Flight shame or flygskam (Swedish) is a social movement that discourages air travel due to its environmental impact, including outsized carbon emissions linked to anthropogenic climate change.
It also reflects on air travelers as people involved in socially undesirable activities, and adaptive behaviour as described in the related Swedish term smygflyga (i.e.
[1] Malena Ernman, an opera singer and the mother of teenage activist Greta Thunberg, also announced publicly that she would stop flying.
[1] While reducing aviation emissions on a global scale requires policy changes because they reflect regulatory and business failures to address the climate crisis, individuals have supported this idea by reducing the carbon footprint of their travel and serving as influencers, voters, and social movement participants to pressure governments and businesses into action.
[7] In a 2019 survey of 6,000 people by the Swiss bank UBS, 21% of respondents in the United States, France, England and Germany said they flew less in the past year.
[13][better source needed] Similarly, flight shame has not been a factor in Belgium either, where a new record of 35 million passengers departed or arrived by plane in 2019.
[14][better source needed] Some U.S. airline executives were concerned that flight shame popularised by Greta Thunberg could play a role as global air travel growth slowed to 4% in 2019, down from an average of 5% per year over the previous decade.
[5] By April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had caused global air travel numbers to plummet, as airlines cut up to 95% of their trips, dwarfing the impact of the flygskam movement.
[18] The 2009 German short video The Bill, created by Germanwatch, explores how travel and its impacts are commonly viewed in everyday developed-world life, and the social pressures that are at play.
[19] British writer George Marshall has investigated common rationalisations that act as barriers to making the personal choice to travel less, or to justify recent trips.
In an informal research project, "one you are welcome to join", he says, he deliberately steered conversations with people who are attuned to climate change problems towards questions about their recent long-distance flights and why their travel was justified.
"[20] In a blog post, Alexandre de Juniac, then-director general and CEO of the airline trade association IATA, said that "Flying is freedom" and "Confining people's horizons to train distances or boat speeds back-steps on a century of worldwide progress.
[25] In 2021, Evelien van Leeuwen published an article about flight shaming which examined the motivations and the decision-making process of airline passengers who decided to offset their carbon emissions through KLM's CO2ZERO program.
The study concludes that while voluntary carbon offsetting can contribute to mitigating the environmental impact of air travel, it is not a sufficient solution to address the climate crisis.
[28] In February 2020, a French opinion survey conducted by Paul Chiambaretto, et al., of the Montpellier Business School showed that 90% of people overestimate the air transport share of CO₂ emissions, more than half think it is over 10% instead of the actual figure of 2–3%.
