If you’re told that something is “a crying shame”, the tone is a bit dismissive, as if to say that yes, things are bad, but that nothing can be done about it. The suggestion of flygskam, a flying shame, is quite different from that. When flygskam is invoked, it is to declare that things are so bad that inaction has become inexcusable.
Flygskam is a Swedish word for the emotion people feel when they realize how much damage to the environment they are doing to the ecology of our planet every time they take a ride on an airplane. The Dutch word for this same feeling is vliegschaamte. The English translation is flight shame.
What is there to feel shame about, soaring high above the earth on the way to a faraway destination? An airplane flying between New York City and London puts 1.6 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for every person on board. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, contributing to the warming of the Earth.
Yesterday, I wrote about the emotion of biophilia, the subjective sense of connection to other living beings. Flygskam requires us to have a larger vision, to grasp that we are not just connected to other individual organisms, but are connected to the planet we live on as well. Our actions have consequences, and when we participate in massive social practices, such as long distance air travel, along with large numbers of people, we have the power to create true calamity.
The important question is not whether flygskam is a valid emotion. The question we need to consider, if we’re to be emotionally honest, is how, knowing what we know about the massive contribution air travel makes to global climate change, and the massive amounts of death and suffering that result from it, anyone can regularly get on board an airplane without feeling that they are part of something that is terribly wrong.
Flygskam has affected me. I have not been on an airplane in this millennium (although I flew a fair amount in the 1980s and 1990s), partly due to awareness of the huge carbon footprint it leaves, partly to avoid TSA bullying, and partly because I can manage without airplanes. A few months ago an old friend offered me a free stay at his unoccupied time-share in Kauai. I was tempted, but I resisted the temptation although I have long wanted to visit Hawaii. When I see a “location” on someone’s Twitter profile that says something like “NYC · LA · airplanes” (e.g., https://twitter.com/maxlugavere) it makes me cringe a little and feel “chumped” by the many who hop on planes all the time without a second thought. What’s the term for that emotion?