“When it comes to the climate and environment, you can’t be a little bit sustainable. Either you are sustainable or you are unsustainable.”

– Greta Thunberg

This of course, begs the question, what is sustainable and how do you know which is which? And that’s when things get a little trickier but from all the tests and calculators then our family life is unsustainable. They all tell me that if everyone lived the way we did then we’d need somewhere between 1.8 to 2 or 3 planets or whatever.

We grow our own food, recycle 90% of our waste, have heating and electricity from renewable sources, constantly seek to reduce, reuse and recycle, offset and watch our water consumption and so on. So if we’re doing all that then what would we need to do to change our lifestyle and live sustainably?

Three things – get rid of the car, give up flying and probably give up meat.

Hmm. Some of those changes are possible requiring some sacrifice and some change. Yet one of them and this would be the main one is something I’m very unlikely to give up. Flying. As Jeremy Williams says,

From an individual point of view, flying is pretty much the most damaging thing we can do to the climate, alongside the number of children you choose to have and the amount of meat you eat. So we really should leave flying for things that matter – visiting family abroad, or once in a lifetime adventures.

https://earthbound.report/2020/02/25/why-wing-it-addressing-the-tragedy-of-default-flying/

As someone who lives in a different country to my family who live on an island (UK) the not flying would no longer seeing my family or them being able to see us -I don’t think my ageing parents have it for a multi-day journey through Europe to get to Sweden by train. If I had a week available to visit the UK I’d spend half of that time getting there and getting home again.

If it hadn’t been for a pandemic, then our 2020 summer holiday was to be taken through Europe and done by train but it seems extremely unlikely that flying will disappear from the lifestyles of those that can afford it. As Jeremy says,

Some people have to take a plane to see family, and everyone needs an adventure from time to time. Black and white approaches aren’t necessarily helpful, and I look forward to taking my children on a plane at some point. Maybe there will eventually be sustainable options for long distance plane travel. But until then, the Western middle class entitlement to fly has to be challenged. We all have the right to fly, but that doesn’t make it responsible or wise. It has to become much more normal not to fly.

https://earthbound.report/2020/08/06/making-it-normal-not-to-fly/

In Sweden the way to achieve this has been through the slightly dubious methodology of peer pressure or shaming. It’s called flygskam (flight shame) which seems all very middle class virtue signalling to me. Because it’s generally the wealthier who caused all the problems but now have the resources to adopt the more expensive and righteous options.

Why am I writing about this? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to both teach my kids to live/think about environmental issues and to begin an audit of how we’re living, what might need to change and whether we’re prepared for that or not.