The Mile-High Confessional Booth
WHEN GRETA THUNBERG DEPARTED EUROPE FOR NEW YORK on Aug. 14 in a zero-emissions racing yacht, she accelerated a global discussion of the morality of flying, which has become a particular fixation of the climate change movement. According to the German nonprofit Atmosfair, a single round-trip flight from London to New York generates 986 kilograms of carbon dioxide per person.
People everywhere who care about emissions often feel a particular kind of shame when they burn an annual household’s worth of carbon on a single trip. But Germans are among the few who have a word for it: Flugscham, or “flying shame.”
The term is actually an import: It comes from , which was coined in Thunberg’s native Sweden., or “train pride,” on Facebook and Twitter. Flugscham’s reception has been more mixed, which is why the German term is ultimately more consequential than the Swedish original. Its ambivalences offer a more accurate view of the strengths and weaknesses of the current movement for climate justice.
