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Carry on flying: why activists should take to the skies

Protesting against air travel might displace attention away from the actions required to reduce carbon emissions at the necessary scale.

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crojem4cropped.jpg

Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Original image cropped by Gralo. Public Domain.

I’m writing this at 35,000 feet above the Bay of Bengal, on my way to lecture in Malaysia at HELP University on Innovation Leadership. Just before take-off, I received some emails from subscribers to my newsletter, questioning my international speaking schedule: “You’re a Professor of Sustainability Leadership, so how can you justify all that flying?” was the gist. “You should lead by example” and encourage everyone to fly much less.