Man is not forced to choose whether to fly or not. You can get both and save money at the same time, writes Merja Mähkä.
The money saved from travel can even be invested in Finnish companies developing climate-friendly technologies. Pink Bröijer
During the fall holiday week, my social media was filled with holiday photos. It felt like the heat of the south had sucked all my friends.
Everyone smiled and enjoyed the sun. It could be read from the updates that we were now on a special journey. The long travel season had done its job. Age abroad for two years, yeah!
The contrast to pre-corona upgrades is quite. Before the corona, there was even talk of flight shame, which materialized in the fact that the bar at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, whose name I had time to forget in a couple of years, was no longer dared to post starting images.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my own attitude to flying. I love traveling: it’s expansive, relaxing, exciting and invigorating. Tourism makes your vacation a holiday. But those emissions. Whenever I count my emissions with one of the network’s carbon footprint counters, flying becomes my biggest climate sin. The situation of choice is disgusting when there is an end of the world at some level and something that makes life feel like life.
The selection situation is not made any easier by the fact that it is presented in such black and white. Life or death. Emission reductions or life. Dichotomy breeds insurgency, indifference and ultimately hopelessness.
However, I think I have come up with some kind of solution that I can both live with and reduce my emissions. I learned it from my investing hobby.
Investing is basically about making the right choices. Are you buying Nokia or Sampo shares? Do you invest your base returns in a forging index fund or in an actively managed fund that can produce more – or less – than an index fund? These are typical questions for a novice investor.
Such choices are wrongly forced. It is quite possible to buy Nokia and Sampo shares or invest in two different funds. In fact, it is quite desirable to decentralize one’s decisions in this way. If you don’t know which one to choose, you may be wondering if you could actually choose both.
After a severe heatwave last summer, I decided to try the same idea for air travel as well. What if we made a summer vacation trip every other year? My family’s air travel emissions would be halved right out of the box like magic! Judging by the Finnish updates, the trips also feel very special after a break of a couple of years, when traveling is not common.
Such a way to reduce emissions is the way big companies operate. A couple of weeks ago Economic life listed 10 Finnish inventions that cut emissions worldwide. Examples of this so-called climate export include Metso-Outotec’s Vertimill mills, which are used to crush stones at mines. They consume up to 50 percent less energy than traditional ball mills. The mills are apparently selling well, even if their customers, the mining companies, are not any real greenbirds. They just want to make sure that in a world that cuts emissions, they can continue to operate.
Similar thinking is also found in anarchist vegan circles. Suvi Auvinen writes in his book Out of meat (Cosmos) wisely about how emissions are reduced in the world more by a large mass reducing its meat intake than by a minority becoming vegan.
I would like to see much more of this kind of multidimensional thinking. We’ve tried exacerbation, and as a Master of Media Studies, I can say that we haven’t actually succeeded very well in that. Instead of angry hopelessness, we should look for hope and solutions where they can be found.
Oh yes: the money saved from travel can even be invested in Finnish companies developing climate-friendly technologies. A single trip for a family of four already saves many tons of money. And if you’re not interested, the money can be spent on a swim-up hotel room with direct access to the pool every second year trip. I’ve always wanted one.
The author buys Sampo shares and units in approximately 17 funds.