Others must sacrifice so I can fly
Conn Carroll
No one likes it when a flight is canceled, especially around Christmastime and especially when you are flying to see your family.
But one ruined holiday doesn’t give anyone the right to demand others to change their lifestyles, especially when the reason behind the ask has no relation to actual science.
A Washington Post reader from Rockville, Maryland, was just one of thousands of passengers who had their Southwest Airlines flights canceled late last year. She was planning on flying from Washington, D.C., to see her two sons, their wives, and her five grandchildren over Christmas.
But instead of blaming airline management for not investing in a software upgrade to better track where all their flight crews were (which was the real reason Southwest had to cancel so many flights), she blamed climate change.
“This is climate change,” the grandmother wrote to the Washington Post. “We have to change our ways or this disaster will be repeated many times.”
Never mind that scientists have found no link between climate change and harsh winter storms — or that her own planned flight from Washington to California would have made the climate change she feels is such a threat even worse.
According to a calculator developed by Swedish scientists, this grandmother’s round-trip flight to California would have sent as much carbon into the atmosphere as one average motorist giving up all car travel for a year or one person going vegetarian for two years.
Maybe this Rockville reader has already given up cars and meat entirely. In that case, fly on. But if you are someone who eats and drives, please do not lecture about global warming to the rest of us while you fly around the country.