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⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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Published on: 2021-07-18
I am deeply concerned by climate change. I consider it to be a single greatest challenge we as a species ever faced. Its consequences are catastrophic, global and already felt. We are in the midst of one of the biggest mass extinctions in history. Extreme weather is already costing human lives and livelihoods on a significant scale. And we are yet to experience the sea level rise, eco-migrations, etc. The entire process is self reinforcing, leading to an exponential worsening, something that humans in general have a hard time even grasping. I could go on and on about various ways climate change scares me.
For now I'll focus on just one contributing factor to the climate change: air travel. You may disagree with me on whether or not aviation has a significant impact on global warming. All that matters for now is that I believe it does. I believe that a decision to board a plane is one of the worst short term decisions an individual can make. Sure, there are decisions with more devastating long-term effects, but if you had an afternoon to hurt the planet then flying would achieve top results. Or so I believe.
And yet...
It was little over a month ago that I got to see my sister and her kids. Little ones are ages one and three. They moved abroad last year, and with global pandemic and getting settled in a foreign county this is the first time they've visited. We are close, I love them and I've missed them. We used to hang out at least once a week ever since moving out of our parental home.
You may have an idea of where this is heading: I picked them up from the airport myself. I do not regret one moment we spent together during their stay. I'm grateful for the technology that brought us together. The hypocrisy comes to me easily. In no way can I fault them for flying. In my mind I spin a tale of family, love and reunions. I got to see my niece and nephew. Their flight was warranted.
And yet...
The pandemic and the related quarantine were hard on us all, in more ways than one. I was luckier than most, by far. I haven't lost anyone close to me. I haven't lost my job and the tech industry I work in is doing well. I haven't been alone. And yet I miss my habits from the pre-pandemic life. One of the things I miss is traveling.
My wife and I used take one, sometimes two trips per year. We started by visiting neighboring countries and widened our reach from there. I have a scratch map of places we've been to next to me right now, and Europe is looking pretty colorful. We love all the fresh ideas and memories we've collected on our travels. We used to gift trips to each other for anniversaries. It's a case of valuing experiences above material possessions. Traveling is the most exciting things we both enjoy equally and together. Our marriage wouldn't be the same without it.
And of course we've taken to flying to reach our destinations. At first going by train or bus was the standard. Then it became a nuisance. In the end we just couldn't pull it off without flying. But that's still OK, as long as it's only one, maybe two return flights per year. For all the experiences it affords us it may actually be worth it. Ultimately it's the frequent flyers that cause the most damage. Most of those are corporate sponsored flights, executives from multinational corporations, that sort of thing. As usual, it comes down to heartless capitalism.
And yet...
I work for a multinational company. I wouldn't describe it as a heartless by any means. It started small, like most businesses, and grew based on the hard work of devoted individuals. Today we have offices around the world, and I am grateful to have an opportunity to work there. I get to do stuff that I otherwise wouldn't in smaller dev shops.
One of responsibilities I enjoy the most is on-boarding and education of newly hired developers. Teaching was always near to my heart. There are a lot of educators in my family. My mom, dad and sister all work either in universities or high schools. Our get-togethers often devolve into discussions on pedagogy. On the other hand I enjoy working on internal frameworks and tools for other developers. Having devs as users is both a blessing and a curse, and it's never boring. All this explains why I find teaching about our tooling and processes so rewarding.
With pandemic restrictions all our education transitioned to an online model. As a result it improved in interesting ways. For example it forced me to compose quality online materials. However, there are still difficulties associated with online work, even as we try to keep live teleconferencing as close to original in-person sessions. Recently we've had several teams from vastly different time zones join us. This broke our model of live presentations, as we couldn't sync up our schedules without at least some of us working odd hours.
And so I suggested flying across the world to give presentations in person. We ended up with a different approach. In the end we invested in building self paced materials for individual learning. But at that meeting, in that moment, I was sincere in my suggestion to fly over there. I wasn't thinking about the global warming or my impact on it. I was a teacher thinking how best to reach my students.
I guess that in the end my hypocrisy stems from the personal. I don't know if these stories incriminate or exonerate me in your eyes. Never did I set out to burn this world of ours; and yet burned it I have.