I’m a travel writer and this is why I stopped flying – completely – and why I still visit places to write about

Last week I turned down a lavish invitation to Abu Dhabi, complete with a business flight and a five-star hotel. Was I angry? Yes, I love runaway climate change, so despite being a travel writer, I’ve stopped flying.

Being a travel writer who doesn’t fly is considered so exotic that I was the second story on Monday As it happensa 55-year-old radio news program broadcast by Canada’s national broadcaster.

The incredulous CBC host asked me when I would quit. It was a decision born of the pandemic, I replied.

My last flight was in March 2020, when I returned from Israel for a group press trip to Palestine. As we landed at Heathrow and our phones started pinging with breaking news, I remember talking to my fellow travel writers in disbelief about the likelihood of lockdowns. Days later, the first stay-at-home order came, and I, like many other people, started maxing out credit cards to survive: no travel, no items, no cash.

Turning to other forms of journalism – including reporting on the Covid-19 cycling boom and its likely post-pandemic crash – kept me afloat.

As flight restrictions were gradually lifted, many people – including travel writers – were desperate to fly again, but I wasn’t too concerned. It wasn’t the fear of traveling in an aluminum tube at 500 miles per hour in close proximity to loosely masked coughing passengers – it was the fear of a warming planet.

For solid scientific reasonsI’ve been feeling guilty about air travel for a while.

Our average CO2 emissions in Britain are roughly 10 tonnes per year per person, and we should aim for less than five tonnes per year.

Our family has an electric car powered by solar panels on the roof, and I usually cycle instead of drive, so there’s little fat to save on my domestic travels.

Stopping flying led to an immediate and significant drop in my CO2 emissions.

I still travel to exotic locations. As mentioned in the Mail, I took high-speed trains and ferries to Malta and Ibiza.

When I traveled to the recent Champion’s League match between Paris St. Germain and Newcastle United, I took the LNER train to London from the North East and connect with the Eurostar to reach the City of Light.

According to Eurostar, this journey from London to Paris used 2.4kg of CO2 per person. Flying between the capitals emits 66 kg per person. Traveling by train reduces emissions by as much as 96 percent. In the Netherlands, the Eurostar to Amsterdam is powered by electricity generated entirely from wind energy, and in Britain that figure is 40 percent and rising.

Carlton explains that when he traveled to the recent Champion’s League match between Paris St. Germain and Newcastle United, he took an LNER train to London from the North East, connecting with the Eurostar to reach the City of Light.

Understandably, the availability of cheap flights makes it a no-brainer for most people to travel by air, but there are still costs involved, and those costs – measured in CO2 emissions – contribute to climate change . We need to reduce our annual emissions, and while not everyone will ever go all out and go flight-free, more long-distance travel can and should be done by ground.

It takes longer to go to Australia, but there is no Planet B.

Carlton can be found on Twitter @carltonreid and his videos can be found at www.youtube.com/@cyclingnews.