fflying with a guilty conscience? Even Christian Baatz knows that. The junior professor at the University of Kiel researches climate ethics. Does it make more sense for the climate to do without flights altogether – or to do research as a climate ethicist and accept a few flights at the same time? Baatz chose the latter. “But sometimes I have a bad feeling about it.” After all, air travel contributes significantly to the climate crisis.
The annual share of global flight emissions in man-made climate change is relatively small on paper. The International Energy Agency (IEA) calculated that it was around two percent in 2022. But from a climate protection point of view, flying is the most harmful thing that an individual can do. According to the Federal Environment Agency, the average greenhouse gas footprint of a German is around eleven tons of CO per year2-Equivalents. A flight from Frankfurt to Sydney (there and back) has emissions of seven to ten tons of CO, depending on the calculator2-Equivalents result. For comparison: If global warming is to be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, each person will be left with significantly less than two tons of CO2 per year, depending on assumptions2. So should we still fly at all?
The guilty conscience flies with you
Since the rise of the Fridays For Future climate protection movement, more people are questioning their personal footprint. Many still want to fly – and then get on the plane with a bad conscience. According to the Statista statistics platform, German aviation transported around 227 million people in 2019, i.e. before the corona pandemic. That is an increase of two thirds compared to 2004. And according to the Federal Environment Agency, the global CO2-Emissions from aviation increased by 29 percent between 2013 and 2019. What’s more, according to data from the aviation tracking company Flightradar24, more commercial aircraft were in the air on July 6 than in any single day since the service began in 2006.
Christian Baatz says that anyone who is able to do so should question their own actions in terms of climate protection. “But you shouldn’t just be concerned with individual options for action either.” Ultimately, from his point of view, it is at least as important for politicians to initiate structural reforms (such as the expansion of renewable energies) and for companies to take greater responsibility (more stringent emissions trading). “We cannot save the world alone,” says Baatz. “But everyone has a responsibility to work for a better climate protection policy.” But what exactly does this responsibility look like?
Air travel is increasing
Ethics deals, among other things, with the question of what morally permissible and forbidden actions are. A rough distinction can be made between three concepts. According to virtue ethics, a person acts morally when he is guided by certain virtues. For many philosophers of ancient Greece these were wisdom, bravery, justice or moderation. What sounds old-fashioned can be updated using the virtue of moderation with climate protection relevance: take yourself back and, if in doubt, do without.
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