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Sustainable Wanderlust: Reconciling Flight-Shame
Do you want to live sustainably and yet travel the world? Here’s a different way to think about your individual action.
Dear Jes,
I consider myself an environmentalist. I have a job in sustainability in which I manage a team of eight in a small sustainability consulting agency — we advice small SME’s as well as multinationals on their sustainability strategy, I go to demonstrations, I volunteer in an urban garden, I also buy exclusively organic food and sustainable clothing, I try to shop as little as possible, I don’t have a car. I try to do sustainability by the books. What I have always loved doing was traveling. I have traveled half the world in my twenties and couldn’t get enough of it. There is nothing more interesting to me than immersing myself in different cultures, I love the tropical sun and seeing all the beauty in the world. It seems so inherently right to travel. Men exist to travel and to explore the world. I am convinced that the only reason God rested on day 7 was that airplanes weren’t yet invented.
For the past three years though, I have refrained from flying. I still travel. Some. I made a pact with myself that I will use only trains, buses, bikes and sailboats as modes of transport. And I have gotten far. I…
