The meeting was held at St Pauls Church hall, Winchester. Members were also able to attend on Zoom during which we were very pleased to host a presentation by the ‘Flight Free’ group.
Our speaker was Anna Hughes, Director and initiator of this charity in 2019. Its aim is to change social habits around flying and foster greater awareness of its environmental impact. Via its website https://flightfree.co.uk it offers the public an opportunity to take a pledge not to fly for one year – or for life.
By the time COVID lockdowns struck, 6,800 pledges had been made, and more thousands continue to come in.
We need to challenge the idea that flying is a normal way to travel, a lifestyle choice. The vast majority of humanity do not have such a choice.
Anna made a distinction between flying for leisure , flying in order to maintain family contact, and flying that has a necessary purpose. There are many alternatives for holiday travel and travel agencies that specialise in flight-free options.
We need to be aware of the disproprtionate carbon footprint of flying, eg a flight to Bali would consume your carbon “ration” for a year, and a transatlantic flight has more emissions per person than not driving for a year or not eating meat for a year.
Government proposals for reducing the environmental impact of flying do not include taxing aviation fuel, instead they revolve around “sustainable” fuel, offsetting and techno solutions not yet discovered. We need more Green MPs !
The pledge can be accessed via the website
Date of next meeting: Wednesday November 2nd, 7.30
If you are looking for alternatives to travel abroad we would suggest trying out https://www.interrail.eu/en and a brilliant website is https://www.seat61.com/ that has any up to date detail about traveling by train in the UK, Europe and around the world.
There are lots of travel guides that offer flight free travel. Or try this one https://mossy.earth/guides/travel/travel-without-flying
