Last month I stepped into an aeroplane for the first time in five years.

I was leaving my home in London and taking a flight across the Atlantic to join my partner in Costa Rica. The last time I flew was in 2014, while living in Bordeaux, France. Getting to my sister’s hen party in Scotland by train, my usual option, would have taken days that I didn’t have, so then too I bit the bullet and took a flight.

The reason I have avoided flying for so long is its hefty carbon footprint. Since I was a teenager I’d had a growing niggling guilt about the emissions from flying, as I found out more and more about climate change and its impacts. After all, flying is probably the most carbon-intensive activity you can do, on an hour-to-hour basis. Eventually this led me to vow only to do it if absolutely necessary.

And I’m not alone. Over the past year or so, an anti-flying movement known as “flight shame” – or flygskam in Swedish, where the movement began – has been gathering pace in Europe.

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The term speaks of the guilt of taking flights at a time when the world needs to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions. For me, it points to a painful contrast between the happy-go-lucky indulgence of a weekend flight and the devastating real world impact of climate change. Others have referred to it as the embarrassment of flying despite being environmentally “woke”.

This growing resistance to aviation has reinvigorated rail travel, with some rediscovering the attraction of night trains, and it is increasing pressure on politicians to address aviation’s climate impact.

But it is also changing our ideas of how, why and where we travel.

Slow travel

Although “shame” is a very negative term, the goals are positive – for people who take part in the movement as well as for the environment. Importantly, it is less about “shaming” other people who fly than changing your own travel patterns.

What’s more, the aim of many promoting less flying is by no means to discourage people from exploring the world. “Not flying doesn’t mean not travelling,” says Anna Hughes, who runs the Flight Free 2020 campaign in the UK. “There are so many places that we can access by other means.”

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