Proximity ethics, climate change and the flyer’s dilemma: Ethical negotiations of the hypermobile traveller

Abstract

This article offers a reading of proximity ethics as a novel way of understanding the moral dilemmas that underpin decisions of whether or not to fly. The question of why people fly, despite holding pro-environmental attitudes and knowing that their behaviour, in contradiction, is harming the earth they value, is not an easy one to answer. Through a co-constructed narrative method, we examine our own flying activity in relation to the proximal ethical decisions in the intersection of family, social and work domains. Our stories highlight that the tensions between normative positions on climate change and travel activities are bound up in the ethical proximal relations that compel intimate contact with others, create the need for face-to-face contact and impel obligation in family/work/social domains in a globalised world. Proximity ethics illuminates the flyer's dilemma as a complex and tenuous web of moral decisions, in which care and proximity play key roles in guiding actions. The contribution of this article lies in its exploration of the quandaries of human behaviour associated with climate change mitigation, using moral philosophy as a window of understanding onto our increasingly technological and hypermobile world.

The Fear of Not Flying: Achieving Sustainable Academic Plane Travel in Higher Education Based on Insights from South Australia

“…Our results also reveal the importance of proximity. Hales and Caton [100], who examine the role of proximity ethics on the 'flyer's dilemma,' argue that the tension between positions on climate change and travel are intertwined with our need for proximity, that is, the desire to have intimate face-to-face contact with others in our family, social, and professional domains. As our findings highlight, all academics asserted the irreplaceability of face-to-face interactions (eg.…”

“…Furthermore, while staff showed strong willingness (and in some cases, experience) to trial virtual alternatives, their advantages were not considered enough to offset the value of direct experience nor were technocratic solutions seen to be able to provide for the underlying relational complexities of face-to-face interaction. The 'moral pressures' of a hypermobile life, combined with the need to fly for family and work-related reasons show that proximal relations, or face-to-face interactions, drive motivations for and toward climate change care and responsibility [100]. Thus, while changing cultural values (to ones that valorize pro-environmental behavior) may offset the desire to travel by plane [16], the importance of face-to-face interaction has wider implications for how leaders within university institutions think about how to create climate-friendly means of doing academic work.…”

Practical Aeromobilities: Making Sense of Environmentalist Air-Travel

“…When working for an environmental organisation, flying was thought of as a 'necessary evil' and a 'tool for doing the job' (Nils), sometimes required 'to meet people in person' (Mikkel) or to 'make things go around' (Endre). There was a general sentiment that air-travel might be worth it if the long-term consequences of doing so likely constitute a net environmental gain (see Baer, 2018;Hales & Caton, 2017;Storme et al, 2017). Moreover, work flights were perceived to be the employer's responsibility as much as their own, as illustrated by expressions like 'it's for work, so I don't quite consider it my flying' (Nils) and 'privately I don't fly …' (Egon).…”

“…This body of literature has tended to operationalise value-action gaps and cognitive dissonance to understand the consumption of air-travel (e.g. Hales & Caton, 2017) while paying less attention to the socio-structural conditions through which frequent flying takes place (Young et al, 2014). The aeromobilities literature has however demonstrated the deep societal embeddedness of aviation (Cwerner et al, 2009).…”

Exploring the Use of Virtual Reality to Support Environmentally Sustainable Behavior: A Framework to Design Experiences

“…However, if the aim is to test a design choice to evaluate the interaction users would have in reality [12], a realistic approach can be more suitable. A realistic experience is also essential when VR journeys are designed to avoid or reduce real-world traveling, as a more sustainable, cheaper, and safer alternative for education, leisure, or working purposes [7,76]. VR allows comparing different representation formats: Chirico et al implemented three different designs of a simulation, showing the user's consumption of plastic using numbers, the correspondent number of water bottle models, or a combination of both [8] displayed in a garden.…”