My take on flying in the 21st century I just read an article in the German weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT, in which one of its authors defends his frequent-flying-lifestyle. First he acknowledges the fact that said behavior absolutely ruins his CO2 footprint. But then he goes on and says that there is no point in blaming aviation for the global warming issue: it only makes up about 2 percent of global CO2 emissions. So there are other sectors like the coal industry or even cement production (4% share of global emissions) that need to be regulated first. Even if flying would be stopped overnight, it would have close to no effect on the global problem. In short: Flying is peanuts on a global scale, there is no need to feel bad when boarding a plane. I can't even describe how wrong I find this kind of argumentation. Because at the end of the day it's just a calculation that doesn't change the smallest bit of the fact that his traveling lifestyle consumes the sutainable ressources of multiple planets and is at the expense of the rest of world's population. In fact everyone who wants to evade their personal responsibilty can do that kind of arithmetics: If you have an Opel that you drive a hundred thousand kilometers per year you can make the argument that the overall share of emissions of the world's Opels only amounts to 0.0005 percent, so they can't be the problem... My point is that everybody is responsible for ones personal emissions (no matter what specious math tricks they can pull off) and should at least be aware of what an incredible privilege it is to emit high amounts of greenhouse gases. In this context there is even something presumptuous about the author's argument. The only reason why the global emissions of avation are so low is that only a small elite of three percent of the world's population enjoys the luxuries of air travel. So he's basically saying that it is ok for him to fly that much, because so many people refrain from it. Thanks for correcting my little rant ;) https://www.zeit.de/zeit-wissen/2019/03/flugreisen-klimaschutz-gewissen-co2-emissionen-treibhausgase