How Did Flight Shame Become a Societal Issue in Germany and Sweden?
It all began with “flygskam”.
If one thing was unimaginable in April 2020 for almost everybody in the world, it was taking the plane. The outbreak of COVID-19 in Europe led to international travel restrictions and airlines had to cancel most of their flights. Globally, the number of passengers traveling by plane halved in April 2020 compared to the same month of the previous year — and went down by about 90 percent in countries like France, Germany and Spain where restrictions were particularly strict then (Mazereanu, 2020).
For some people, this came at the right time. The Swedish neologism flygskam (“flight shame”) had only been introduced in 2017 (Wolrath Söderberg & Wormbs, 2019). It reflected what an increasingly eco-conscious Swedish population thought: That flying was something to feel guilty for because of climate change. In Germany, a country ranked 6th when it comes to implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (Sustainable Development Report, 2019), the translation “Flugscham” was added to the 2020 edition of the major dictionary “Duden” (rnd.de, 2020).
If lockdowns, quarantine and closed borders had one advantage, it was the very reduced number of available flights for those identifying with flygskam.
Flygskam, a question of ecological sustainability?
The bad conscience some people feel when taking the plane is supported by scientific research showing the harmful effect of flying: “Commercial aviation accounts for about 2.6 [percent] of global CO2 emissions. If the high-altitude effect is included, it is at least 3–4 [percent] of the total anthropogenic climate impact.” (Wolrath Söderberg & Wormbs, 2019, p. 48).
The recognition of flying as an environmental threat did not happen overnight because “problems and issues of various kinds only become recognized as such [..] through talk, communication, discourse which defines or ‘constructs’ them as problems or issues for public and political concern.” (Hansen, 2019, p. 13) However, according to Hansen’s constructionist perspective, it is not facts and figures that make people aware of problems, but public claim-making, thus assigning meaning to something (2019).
In this case, flying has been polemized by combining it with the pejoratively connotated term “shame”. This was done by public Swedish figures such as Greta Thunberg’s mother who declared to abstain from flying (Wolrath Söderberg & Wormbs, 2019). This, in turn, led to a social media movement in which people multiplied the discourse by sharing their stories with the hashtag #jagstannarpåmarken (“I stay on the ground”).
Flight shame proponents support strong sustainability, defined as “requiring that neither natural nor man-made capital decline [over time]” (Hedenus, 2018, p. 51). In this perspective, the fact that the man-made aviation industry creates jobs and increases economic growth does not justify damaging the atmosphere by the emission of harmful substances from airplanes. After all, clean air belongs to what is called “critical natural capital” (Hedenus, 2018, p. 56).
Flight shame in Sweden and Germany
The legitimacy and importance granted to flight shame certainly differ from one country to another. Germans and Swedes are among the European nationalities that believe the most in the bad impact of climate change: more than 77 percent of Germans and about 81 percent of Swedes (European Social Survey, 2018).
Media and communication scholar Ulrika Olausson shows that air travel was frequently brought up by Swedish Facebook commenters to argue against a newspaper article claiming that livestock largely contributes to climate change. Those commenters declared air travel as the main emitter of damaging greenhouse gases (Olausson, 2018). Hence, air travel seems to be anchored in the minds of many Swedish people as environmentally harmful. In a Swedish survey from the beginning of 2019, almost 70 percent of all Swedes confessed that they had experienced flight shame (Travel News, 2019).
In Germany, it appears to be less: According to the results of a German survey published in March of 2020, 26 percent of Germans between 18 and 24 have perceived the guilt of flying — among those who took the plane at least once in the current or past year for a private stay of more than 4 nights (Keller, 2020). This percentage is lower in other age groups.
The actual percentage of survey respondents feeling guilty for flying might be higher if a process called “cognitive dissonance” is taken into account: It can be assumed that people who did take the plane would not admit that they regret their decision of flying in order to avoid emotional discomfort (cf. Olausson, 2018). Also, since the only Germans interviewed were the ones who did take the plane, the percentage of Germans who feel flygskam among those who did not fly in the considered time frame might be a lot higher. Ultimately, perceiving guilt for flying is a probable reason why somebody would not fly in the first place.
The Swedish researchers Maria Wolrath Söderberg and Nina Wormbs conducted an anonymous survey in Sweden which led to their book “Grounded. Beyond flygskam”. It was published in 2019 amidst the Swedish societal discourse on the necessity and legitimacy of flying that motivated the almost 900 participants of the survey to stop or drastically reduce flying.
The two scholars describe flying as a “wicked problem” (2019, p. X), a term often used for problems like climate change that require a complex combination of various solutions. In the case of flying, individual solutions might not be sufficient to reduce the emissions produced by aviation. Some argue that systemic change is intertwined with individual action, e.g. higher carbon taxes on aviation making alternative means of transport more attractive. In Germany, the value-added tax on train tickets by the State-owned railroad company “Deutsche Bahn” has been more reduced from 17 to 9 percent starting on January 1rst 2020. This led to a 10 % increase of passengers in January alone (ZEIT Online, 2020).
Flight shaming to induce civic engagement
Some activist groups try to create civic engagement by extrinsic flight shaming — the process of communicating to other people that they should feel bad about their decision to travel by plane. One example is “Extinction Rebellion”, a global environment movement founded in 2018 which uses civil disobedience as a form of gaining media attention for messages about ecological sustainability. “Extinction Rebellion Germany” garnered international media coverage by a campaign carried through on the weekend of August 17th/18th 2020. On their official Facebook page, the members posted a retrospective video that documents the “[disruption of] 4 airports!!” to show their stand “against useless short-distance flights” and the call for “a last-minute exit” (Extinction Rebellion, 2020).
Disobedience actions were planned in four German cities: Lübeck, Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Munich. The main motivator was the reopening of Lübeck airport entirely for domestic flights. Sitting down on the airfield, the self-proclaimed “rebels” held up signs with different claims like “The climate emergency and short-distance flights contradict each other!” Other activists booked a plane ticket and stood up in front of fellow passengers just before a plane would takeoff to loudly proclaim that domestic flying is a harmful practice for the environment. In short, they used the discursive strategy of flight shaming.
Alessandro Nanì analyzed different existing models that describe how civic engagement arises (2012). He concluded that a combination of them leads to the most accurate formula: Civic engagement = specific proposition + design to call attention + publics’ empowerment. In the case of the German “Extinction Rebellion” activists, the specific proposition (a measurable goal) would be to stop domestic flights. The group garners attention by different actions, among others: 1) activists blocking the airfield, some of them gluing themselves to the ground and holding up signs while waiting until the police forcefully “removes” them, 2) entering planes and spreading their message orally, prompting the police to intervene and thereby garnering more public attention.
The “rebels” called their action Luftblock (“air block”); the main slogan being “Short-distance flights only for insects”. This message is a humorous way of showing the group’s stance for environmental protection since many insects can fly whereas humans need man-made support (planes) to do so. The publics’ empowerment is expressed through the vague call to action “Act Now”. This can be understood as addressing the Germany airline company to stop domestic flights and people to join the movement and/or to simply stop booking domestic flights.
However, Swedish citizens who decided to radically fly less recall that their motivation was rarely derived from flygskam (Wolrath Söderberg & Wormbs, 2019).
Instead, predominant reasons to fly less are 1) knowledge and experience (e.g. learning about climate change), 2) morality (e.g. wanting to be a role model, taking responsibility), 3) flying as a social issue (being influenced by other people’s discussions, decisions, publications) and 4) the awareness of alternatives, e.g. good train connections (Wolrath Söderberg & Wormbs, 2019).
Concluding words
Flight shame has been constructed as a legitimate environmental concern by publicly held discussions in Germany and Sweden, where the existence of climate change is an accepted reality for most citizens. Flight shaming aims to make other people feel guilty for flying — its efficiency has yet to be proven.
How did the flight shaming done by “Extinction Rebellion” at German airports influence those who were taking the plane that weekend? Did it motivate people to change their behavior or did the “shaming” induce contrary behavior, hence the will to continue flying because the activists’ opinion was perceived as irrational and irritating? Is shame a productive emotion that can lead to new behavioral patterns? Would flight shaming work in countries like the U.S. with plenty of climate skeptics?
Another open question is whether flight shaming is discriminatory. Can people be shamed when they cannot allocate sufficient financial resources or time (e.g. due to few vacation days) for travel alternatives? Can they be shamed for flying when their employee decides on the means of transportation? What about immigrants and “expats” who have few ways of meeting their relatives on other continents without using the plane?
Left for discussion is also the controversial point of individual contributions to ecological sustainability: According to ecomodernists, they are not suitable to slow down climate change.
Ecomodernists believe in technologies like geoengineering to cool down the atmosphere and want to allow humankind to equally profit from contemporary technologies and man-made innovations such as planes — guilt-free (Fahy, 2017). To fly or not to fly, that is and remains a philosophical and ethical question.
© Annika Wappelhorst 2020
References
European Social Survey (2018). European Attitudes to Climate Change and Energy: Topline Results from Round 8 of the European Social Survey. Accessed 3 September 2020.
Extinction Rebellion Germany (2020). XR-Aktion Luftblock an 4 dt. Flughäfen (16./17.8.2020) (Video). Accessed 1 September 2020.
Fahy, Declan and Matthew C. Nisbet: The Ecomodernists. Journalists Reimagining a Sustainable Future, in: Berglez, Peter, Olausson, Ulrika & Ots, Mart (eds) (2017). What is Sustainable Journalism? Integrating the Environmental, Social and Economic Challenges of Journalism. New York: Peter Lang Inc. (About 200 p.)
Hansen, Anders (2019). Environment, Media and Communication. Second Edition. Routledge. (244 p.)
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Keller, Sarah (2020). Haben Sie schon einmal Flugscham erlebt? Accessed 2 September 2020.
Mazereanu, E. (2020). Year-on-year change of weekly flight frequency of global airlines from January 6 to August 30, 2020, by country. Accessed 1 September 2020.
Nanì, Alessandro (2013). Crossmedia Practices for the Enhancement of Civic Engagement. (Master’s Thesis at Tallin University.)
Olausson, Ulrika (2018). “Stop Blaming the Cows!”: How Livestock Production is Legitimized in Everyday Discourse on Facebook, Environmental Communication, 12:1, 28–43, DOI: 10.1080/17524032.2017.1406385
Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (2020). Neuer Duden mit Corona-Begriffen, Flugscham und transgender. Accessed 31 August 2020.
Sustainable Development Solutions Network and Bertelsmann Stiftung (sdgindex.org). Sustainable Development Report 2019. Accessed 31 August 2020.
Travel News (2019). Hälften av svenskarna känner flygskam. Accessed 2 September 2020.
Wolrath Söderberg, Maria, and Nina Wormbs with the European Liberal Forum (2019). Grounded. Beyond Flygskam. Spektar. (75 p.)
ZEIT ONLINE, AFP, dpa, tst (2020). Nach Steuersenkung deutlich mehr Fahrgäste bei der Bahn. Accessed 23 September 2020.
