Yes, I Get on Planes to Fight Climate Change

The ethical complexities of living in a moment when advocating for climate action often demands high-carbon work lives.

This all began with a tweetnado about whether or not Leonardo DiCaprio is a hypocrite: He claims to want climate action, some folks tweeted, but he’s constantly jetting around the world. While his personal emissions might not be that important in the giant scales of climate systems, did his professional carbon footprint undermine the message he’s delivering? The argument is still raging now.

I am not a movie star, but I do often travel for my work. I fly to fight climate change. This is not something I have simple feelings about, so I want to explain what (I think) are the issues involved and share how I see them.

Some people are deeply concerned with climate impacts of travel itself. Flying is very CO2-intensive; CO2 is warming the planet, which is terrible: therefor flying is terrible, so every opportunity to reduce flying should be seized. To not do so, some of them argue, is to become moral hypocrites.

Others are concerned with perception of hypocrisy: if climate leaders fly, others will not take them (or their message of cutting CO2) seriously. To these folks, it’s not the emissions…