International jet travel is the last big ecological footprint I make. In 1999 I sold my car, and now bike, walk, bus, or car-share. I buy only what’s necessary. Nothing gets wasted; not energy, water, food, or goods and services. Having made environmental concerns the filter for all decision making for over two decades, how do I justify continuing to fly?
My passions for peacemaking and for conservation are equal values. I offset my flying carbon footprint by reducing my living carbon footprint. Making international trips feels essential to me. I go to other countries to experience cultures I would not otherwise know, to talk to people I have no other way to understand, to see for myself the peace efforts being made everywhere, to make peace one person at a time, and to learn more than the popular press has the capacity to relate .
However, I predict that air travel as we know it will end within the next decade or two. All discretionary passenger flights in conventional aircraft will be grounded. There will be limited exceptions for emergency, military, and essential personnel. That’s right - no wheels rolling down the tarmac no matter how rich you are, unless the trip has been cleared by an international air travel approval body regulating the new world order. There are three reasons for this: safety, cost of fuel, and the environmental consequences of jet exhaust in the atmosphere.
The environmentalist in me sees the logic of this, and understands that it might come to this sooner than anyone is expecting. From an environmental perspective, air travel is too much of a carbon load to continue unchecked. However, the peacemaker in me is in despair over its inevitability. How will our cross-cultural, inter-faith and ambassadorial exchanges continue without fast ways to get to places where we most need to talk? The first reason for ending air travel was safety. Yet, the world becomes less safe if we can’t meet in person with those who are unlike ourselves. That’s what people in conflict do - talk only to people who agree. Peacemakers bridge that gap, facilitating dialogues among those who disagree. So, we must meet and talk to people of all perspectives and worldviews and opinions.
Last year I was in Yemen with two other women, traveling by ourselves just to learn, talk, dialogue, share, and experience. Dialogue with the Yemenis revealed so much in common in our shared hopes, dreams, visions for our lives and families. Now, when I read news reports from Yemen I can put a friendly face to the story. It’s the same for every country I visit.
So, my two passions are in conflict. Soon we will all have to stop our recreational and business air travel. Good, says my environmental self. That’s tragic, says my peacemaker self. I reconcile this as a mediator having to make a hard decision would. Global climate change has to be addressed now AND peace is just as pressing an issue. Mediators live easily in dichotomies, and dialectics are our normal workplaces: That is, the ability to hold two or more inconsistent ideas at the same time without our becoming uncomfortable that the conflicting ideas are in debate with each other in our minds.
It will be more difficult to solve global environmental issues and make peace and build trust among peoples without the face-to-face exchanges, but we will have to find a way. It is not possible to chose to solve only one of these global issues.
