Please fill in the form below to make your pledge to keep your feet on the ground. The more people that sign up the more we can shout about it and encourage even more people to follow the lead.
I pledge to stay grounded for:
Why pledge?
On every flight to New York and back, each traveller emits about 1.2t of CO2, using Department for Transport figures. This compares to an average British personal total of 7.1t (2013). To get down to a fair share of the world’s total, this must be cut to 1.2t. Air travel is also worse than this because it puts out more pollution than just CO2. For example, water vapour at high levels forms thin clouds that have a warming effect. We can see trails visibly blanketing the earth. This and other effects mean that air travel has more than twice the warming effect of the carbon dioxide alone – the whole is referred to as radiative forcing. So each flight adds more to climate change than we should be emitting altogether.
We know it’s not easy or even possible for some people to cut out air travel completely but it can be possible to cut down on a lot of non essential trips. There’s lots of incredible places to visit and explore nearer to home, and train travel can be an adventure in itself. If you work for a company where you are asked to travel you could enquire whether it’s possible to meet using video conferencing technology for some meetings.
Pledging is a great way to commit to thinking of cutting back and committing to do so. Commit for as long as you think you can and share with friends and family to let them know you have done so and maybe they will think about it too.