I'm an Avid Traveler: Here's Why I Am Flying Far Less Than Ever

I became a travel writer for the same reason many people do: I'm an avid traveler and have been for as long as I can remember.

I love nothing better than to get as far off the beaten path as possible, immersing myself in nature or having genuine interactions with people from other cultures.

My earliest travel memories are of my mother taking me on adventure-filled, cross-country trips each summer during middle school. We would pack up her van and the two of us would hit the open road, leaving behind our small apartment in upstate New York to spend weeks exploring each and every one of the national parks throughout America’s southwest.

Zion. Check.

Arches National Park. Also, check.

Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Canyonlands national parks. Also check, check and check.

Those summer adventures continue to be among my fondest memories, and I firmly believe they played a formative role in my life trajectory. Now as a mother myself, I love nothing more than showing my son the world, inspiring his own wanderlust and allowing him to grow as a global citizen whose mindset stretches far beyond the boundaries of our California zip code.

All of which makes it even harder for me to scale back my globetrotting. I have always been my happiest and truly in my element when exploring new countries.

But with each passing year, and especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, I'm also sadly and increasingly aware of how each flight I take impacts the planet amid the worsening climate crisis.

And I feel it is my responsibility to change my ways, as much as is possible.

As a travel writer, I’m offered hundreds of press trip opportunities each year and the old me would have jumped at as many of those invites as my calendar would allow. But the new me takes a far different approach, one inspired by an article I read last year In The New York Times titled "The No Jet-Set: They've Given Up Flying to Save the Planet."

“With airplanes producing a large amount of climate-warming emissions, a growing number of travelers are signing pledges to keep their journeys on the ground,” says the article, which goes on to explain that a small, yet growing, number of travelers, are giving up flying because of its impact on the climate.

The article also points out that the last eight years on earth have been the hottest on record. Sea level rise is accelerating, and extreme weather events are happening more often than ever.

Furthermore, air travel accounts for about 4 percent of human-induced global warming, and the United Nations has said that airplane emissions are set to triple by 2050.

And here was perhaps the most persuasive part of the article, at least for me: “This is a climate emergency. When you get on a plane, not only are you responsible for emissions, but you’re also casting a vote to continue expanding that system" said Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory who founded No Fly Climate Sci, an online forum on the link between aviation and climate change.

I have not signed a pledge to keep my journeys on the ground. I think that would be impossible living in the United States, not to mention given my line of work. But I am thinking far more carefully about each trip I agree to and have substantially reduced the number of trips I take annually.

As part of my new approach, whenever possible, I also try to make sure those plane trips count. I accomplish this by spending as long as possible in a destination, which ties into another more recent development: the slow travel movement.

Slow travel is an approach to travel that emphasizes connection to local people and cultures and eschews hopping on plane after plane or bus after bus to zig-zag throughout a country and squeeze in as much as possible.

At the most fundamental level, slow travel is exactly what the name implies - simply staying in places longer.

For my family’s summer vacation this year we went to Sicily. We spent nearly a month there. Not just because I wanted to take my time and relax as we visited Sicily, but because I was very cognizant of the impact of my multi-gen family’s carbon footprint getting to Sicily and back. In light of that reality, I deliberately booked as long a trip as possible to support the slow travel movement. And I plan to continue doing that for future international vacations.

Slower travel is only part of my effort to change my ways. This year, including personal or family travel and work-related trips, I will be taking round-trip flights about four times. That's an incredibly significant reduction from past years and was a conscious decision. And next year I hope to take no more than five round-trip flights and keep it at this level moving forward.

I review professional invitations far more carefully and only choose a handful of very meaningful trips. My goal is to focus on trips that somehow tie into my key areas of focus: family travel, sustainable travel, wildlife conservation. I'm also more apt to accept trips these days that I can drive to with my electric vehicle. And I no longer have FOMO when I watch friends and colleagues jetting to a country for a brief press trip or personal visit, as I recently watched a professional acquaintance do, flying from California to Bali for a mere two days on the ground.

On some level, all of the things I'm doing are also in hopes of setting a good example for my 11-year-old son. I want to model for him that life isn't all about consumption and me, me, me. And that each of us has a role to play in being stewards for this planet for future generations — in the same way that I engaged him when I made the decision to put solar panels on our house, buy an electric vehicle, compost our food waste and the myriad other decisions and actions I take in our daily lives.

At the risk of being a downer, I think we all have a responsibility to live mindfully, including when it comes to making travel decisions. Especially those of us in the travel industry. It is entirely possible to identify just a few trips each year to prioritize. And not take every trip that comes our way, or even half the trips that come our way.

Think of it like "Meatless Mondays." Nobody is asking that you to give up meat/travel entirely. But you can take steps to be part of the solution and scale back what you’re doing. And if we all thoughtfully scaled back our globetrotting to some degree, imagine the impact...

Don’t get me wrong, the new me continues to have neverending wanderlust. But I also want my son to inherit a healthy planet and one that he will have the opportunity to explore for years to come.

If members of travel industry don’t step up and lead the way, setting the example when it comes to being considerate global citizens, who will?