{"id":135838,"date":"2023-12-21T10:37:07","date_gmt":"2023-12-21T10:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluemull.com\/?p=135838"},"modified":"2023-12-21T10:37:07","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T10:37:07","slug":"im-a-travel-writer-and-heres-why-ive-stopped-flying-completely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluemull.com\/lifestyle\/im-a-travel-writer-and-heres-why-ive-stopped-flying-completely\/","title":{"rendered":"I&apos;m a travel writer and here&apos;s why I&apos;ve stopped flying &#8211; completely"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1> I&#8217;m a travel writer and here&#8217;s why I&#8217;ve stopped flying &#8211; completely &#8211; and how I still visit places to write about<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Carlton Reid makes a living as a travel writer despite a self-imposed plane ban<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>READ MORE: The Christmas items you should AVOID packing in cabin bags<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Last week, I turned down a luscious invite to Abu Dhabi, complete with a business-class flight and a five-star hotel. Was I mad? Yes, mad about runaway climate change, and so, despite being a travel writer, I\u2019ve stopped flying.<\/p>\n<p>Being a travel writer that doesn\u2019t fly is deemed so exotic that I was the second story on Monday\u2019s As It Happens, a 55-year-old radio news show aired by Canada\u2019s national broadcaster.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The incredulous CBC host asked me when I\u2019d quit. It was a decision brought on by the pandemic, I replied.<\/p>\n<p>My last flight was in March 2020, returning from Israel on a group press trip to Palestine. As we landed at Heathrow, and our phones started pinging with the latest news, I remember talking, incredulously, about the likelihood of lockdowns with my fellow travel writers. Days later came the first stay-at-home order, and I, like many other people, started maxing out credit cards to survive: no travel, no articles, no cash.<\/p>\n<p>Pivoting to other forms of journalism \u2014 including reporting on the Covid-19 bicycle boom and its likely post-pandemic crash \u2014 I kept my head above water.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/12\/21\/09\/79174705-12889093-Carlton_Reid-a-10_1703150083372.jpg\" height=\"476\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Travel writer Carlton Reid (above) last flew in March 2020. Now he travels everywhere by bike, train and electric car<\/p>\n<p>When flight restrictions were gradually lifted, many people &#8211; including travel writers \u2014 were desperate to fly again, but I wasn\u2019t so fussed. It wasn\u2019t fear of travelling in a 500-mile-per-hour aluminium tube in close proximity to loosely masked coughing passengers &#8211; it was the fear of a heating planet.<\/p>\n<p>For solid scientific reasons, I\u2019d felt guilty about air travel for some time.<\/p>\n<p>Our average CO2 output in the UK is roughly 10 tonnes a year per person, and we need to aim for lower than five tonnes per year.<\/p>\n<p>Our family has an electric car powered by rooftop solar panels, and I usually cycle rather than drive, so there\u2019s little fat to trim from my domestic travel.<\/p>\n<p>Quitting flying led to an immediate and significant drop in my carbon emissions.<\/p>\n<p>I still travel to exotic locations. As reported in the Mail, I\u2019ve taken high-speed trains and ferries to Malta and Ibiza.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When I travelled to the recent Champion\u2019s League match between Paris St. Germain and Newcastle United, I took the LNER train to London from the North East, linking up with the Eurostar to reach the City of Light.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>According to Eurostar, this journey\u2019s London to Paris leg used 2.4kgs of CO2 per person. Flying between the capitals emits 66kgs per person. Taking the train reduces emissions by a whopping 96 per cent. In the Netherlands, the Eurostar to Amsterdam is powered by electricity entirely generated from wind, and in the UK, that figure is 40 per cent and rising.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/12\/21\/09\/79174709-12889093-image-a-12_1703150294259.jpg\" height=\"476\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Carlton explains that when he travelled to the recent Champion\u2019s League match between Paris St. Germain and Newcastle United, he took an LNER train to London from the North East, linking up with the Eurostar to reach the City of Light<\/p>\n<p>Understandably, the availability of cheap flights makes it a no-brainer for most people to travel by air, but there\u2019s still a cost, and that cost \u2014 measured in CO2 emissions \u2014 is helping to fuel climate change. We need to reduce our annual emissions, and while not everybody will ever go full hairshirt by becoming flight-free, more long-distance travel can and should be done over the ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019ll take longer\u00a0to get to Australia, but there\u2019s no Planet B.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span>Carlton can be found tweeting at <\/span><span>@carltonreid<\/span><span> and his videos can be found at <\/span><span>www.youtube.com\/@cyclingnews<\/span><span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/travel\/article-12889093\/Im-travel-writer-heres-Ive-stopped-flying-completely-visit-places-write-about.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m a travel writer and here&#8217;s why I&#8217;ve stopped flying &#8211; completely &#8211; and how I still visit places to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>I&amp;apos;m a travel writer and here&amp;apos;s why I&amp;apos;ve stopped flying - completely - bluemull<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bluemull.com\/lifestyle\/im-a-travel-writer-and-heres-why-ive-stopped-flying-completely\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I&amp;apos;m a travel writer and here&amp;apos;s why I&amp;apos;ve stopped flying - completely - bluemull\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;m a travel writer and here&#8217;s why I&#8217;ve stopped flying &#8211; 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