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ECOLOGIST  TRANSPORT Illustration by Mark Boardman represented by meiklejohn.co.uk A flying shame Richard Orange learns why more Swedes are boycotting flights and taking the train At the end of 2018, Anna Maria Hilborn decided that the next time she and her young son went to Innsbruck in Austria to visit her brother they would go by train. “I had been thinking about it for a long time, and I think I was affected by the fact that so many other people were also doing it,” said the 33-year-old art teacher from Eskilstuna, a small city near Stockholm. “There was a hashtag #stayontheground. It made a difference that there was a movement you could attach yourself to.” So, a few months ago she and five-year-old Alvar spent four days of their 10-day Easter break making their way through Denmark, Germany and Austria. “It’s been awesome. It’s been great,” she said on the last leg of her journey home. “We haven’t had an argument in 10 days. I couldn’t run away and do something else – it was just being with him in a completely different way.” Hilborn is one of more than 100,000 Swedes touched by the flygskam (‘flight shame’) movement. The movement has taken off over the past year, pushed by celebrity backers such as the TV ski commentator Bjørn Ferry, the opera singer Malena Ernman, and Ernman’s now world-famous activist daughter Greta Thunberg. The Tågsemester (‘train holidays’) Facebook page has gained more than 90,000 members, and according to a survey by WWF 23% of Swedes avoided a flight in 2018 to reduce their impact on the climate. The trend is having a real-world impact. Passenger numbers at Sweden’s 10 airports had, by the start of May, dropped year-on-year for eight consecutive months, sales of Interrail tickets in Sweden surged 45% in 2018, and national rail operator SJ reported a record 31.8 million passenger journeys in 2018, up 5%. According to the calculator on the Loco2 train booking website, Hilborn and her son each reduced their carbon dioxide emissions by 336kg as a result of her decision, reducing their total annual emissions by 8% in a single trip. “My personal impact won’t change a lot,” she conceded. “But when a percentage of people starts doing something, it creates a new norm. So just by being a part of that movement and sharing it, I’m doing something.” It cost her about €280 for an Interrail pass, her son travelled free of charge, and flights from Sweden to Innsbruck are expensive, so, unusually, their journey turned out cheaper than flying. In Sweden there’s been a predictable backlash, with right-wing politicians and newspaper columnists accusing the movement’s members of being uppermiddle-class snobs seeking to shame working-class Swedes for their charter trips to Thailand and the Canary Islands. Hilborn brushed off this criticism: “Of course it’s a middle-class thing. There’s always a class aspect. But it’s better that the middle classes take the train than that nobody does it.” Now, she said, some of her friends are going to copy her when they next go on holiday. “People thought it was brave of course, but nobody thought it was very strange, and a lot of friends have been inspired by it and now they want to do it.” As for her, she hasn’t yet booked her next trip. But she is fairly certain that when she does, she won’t be going by plane. Richard Orange is a freelance writer based in Sweden. 14 Resurgence & Ecologist September/October 2019
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EMISSIONS  ECOLOGIST Geared up to go neutral Copenhagen is leading the way, writes Catherine Early What do Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol and London have in common? They have all set themselves the target to become carbon-neutral, with plans to dramatically reduce emissions from housing, transport and energy systems. Though target dates so far range from 2030 to 2050, all have recognised the severity of recent scientific warnings that climate change needs to be treated as a state of emergency. In Denmark, Copenhagen has been working on similar plans since 2012, when the city council adopted its CPH 2025 Climate Plan. This aims to make the city carbon-neutral by 2025, which – if successful – would make it the first capital city in the world to achieve such a goal. Copenhagen has reduced its emissions by 42% since 2005, according to Jørgen Abildgaard, director of the city’s climate programme. This reduction took place at a time when the population grew by 16%, and was mainly attributable to the increased use of biomass in combined heat and power production, and a growth in wind power to generate energy. Some 20,000 street lamps in the city have been replaced with LED bulbs, saving 57% of energy compared to 2010. The 100-year-old district-heating network – through which heat is produced and supplied from one neighbourhood plant, instead of within each household – has achieved major energy savings through the replacement of steam with hot water in its system and a reduction in the temperature of the supply pipe. Already a cycle-friendly city, Copenhagen has built new cycle lanes and walkways over the harbour to provide better links between parts of the city. Since 2010, CO 2 emissions from transport have fallen by 9%, while the number of kilometres driven on the city’s road network has fallen by 3%, and cycle traffic has risen by 12%. However, as the plan moved into its second phase, covering 2017 to 2020, the city recognised that far more needs to be done, since the cheap and easy options for cutting CO 2 emissions have been all but exhausted. According to Abildgaard, there are particular challenges when it comes to traffic congestion, converting vehicles to new types of fuel, and reducing energy consumption in the city. Indeed, the city admits that the transition has been slower than expected, with national measures such as congestion zones and changes to energy taxes failing to materialise. Car ownership is expected to rise, exacerbated by the city’s population growth. One idea under consideration is “mobility as a service”, which would introduce a subscription scheme to provide residents and visitors with easy access to ordering and paying for their daily transport by bus, train, car sharing, bike and taxi as a flexible alternative to private cars. This is being piloted with 200 families, and officials intend to roll it out city-wide if successful. Ultimately, Abildgaard says, the key to the success of Copenhagen’s plan will be collaboration – with citizens, internationally, and with the private sector. “One of the preconditions in a city is close collaboration with stakeholders. We can set up a programme but it’s really the private sector that needs to implement it. They have the investment power,” he explains. For example, the city has been working with businesses including its district-heating operator HOFOR and energy companies Ørsted and ABB to test and demonstrate solutions and products that integrate energy production and use in buildings and the transport sector in Nordhavn, a new part of the city under development. The projects will use real-time data to intelligently control subsystems and components in order to improve energy flexibility, making renewable energy more efficient. Projects have been initiated with towns and cities around the world, such as climate adaptation with New York, and water and district-heating projects with Beijing. “We need to have international cooperation,” Abildgaard says. “We are too small on our own.” Catherine Early is chief reporter for TheEcologist.org Illustration by David Doran www.daviddoran.co.uk Issue 316 Resurgence & Ecologist 15

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ECOLOGIST  TRANSPORT

Illustration by Mark Boardman represented by meiklejohn.co.uk

A flying shame Richard Orange learns why more Swedes are boycotting flights and taking the train

At the end of 2018, Anna Maria Hilborn decided that the next time she and her young son went to Innsbruck in Austria to visit her brother they would go by train. “I had been thinking about it for a long time, and I think I was affected by the fact that so many other people were also doing it,” said the 33-year-old art teacher from Eskilstuna, a small city near Stockholm. “There was a hashtag #stayontheground. It made a difference that there was a movement you could attach yourself to.”

So, a few months ago she and five-year-old Alvar spent four days of their 10-day Easter break making their way through Denmark, Germany and Austria. “It’s been awesome. It’s been great,” she said on the last leg of her journey home. “We haven’t had an argument in 10 days. I couldn’t run away and do something else – it was just being with him in a completely different way.”

Hilborn is one of more than 100,000 Swedes touched by the flygskam (‘flight shame’) movement. The movement has taken off over the past year, pushed by celebrity backers such as the TV ski commentator Bjørn Ferry, the opera singer Malena Ernman, and Ernman’s now world-famous activist daughter Greta Thunberg.

The Tågsemester (‘train holidays’) Facebook page has gained more than 90,000 members, and according to a survey by WWF 23% of Swedes avoided a flight in 2018 to reduce their impact on the climate.

The trend is having a real-world impact. Passenger numbers at Sweden’s 10 airports had, by the start of May, dropped year-on-year for eight consecutive months, sales of Interrail tickets in Sweden surged 45% in 2018, and national rail operator SJ reported a record 31.8 million passenger journeys in 2018, up 5%.

According to the calculator on the Loco2 train booking website, Hilborn and her son each reduced their carbon dioxide emissions by 336kg as a result of her decision, reducing their total annual emissions by 8% in a single trip.

“My personal impact won’t change a lot,” she conceded. “But when a percentage of people starts doing something, it creates a new norm. So just by being a part of that movement and sharing it, I’m doing something.”

It cost her about €280 for an Interrail pass, her son travelled free of charge, and flights from Sweden to Innsbruck are expensive, so, unusually, their journey turned out cheaper than flying.

In Sweden there’s been a predictable backlash, with right-wing politicians and newspaper columnists accusing the movement’s members of being uppermiddle-class snobs seeking to shame working-class Swedes for their charter trips to Thailand and the Canary Islands.

Hilborn brushed off this criticism: “Of course it’s a middle-class thing. There’s always a class aspect. But it’s better that the middle classes take the train than that nobody does it.”

Now, she said, some of her friends are going to copy her when they next go on holiday. “People thought it was brave of course, but nobody thought it was very strange, and a lot of friends have been inspired by it and now they want to do it.”

As for her, she hasn’t yet booked her next trip. But she is fairly certain that when she does, she won’t be going by plane.

Richard Orange is a freelance writer based in Sweden.

14 Resurgence & Ecologist

September/October 2019

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